Within the Looking Glass
by Bakura13
Summary: Everyone wants revenge some time...whether it be today,tomorrow...or 5000 years from then. Something is driving the yamis psychotic and it's driving them to hurt and possibly kill their aibou and other people. Please Read and Review, warnings inside
1. Prologue

(Okay then o_o this story is being co-written with Tora-kun and I . She wrote this prologue and if you don't really have an idea who badru is, just scan through the second chapter of my egypt yugioh story for explaination of his weirdness -_-; The characters Badru belongs to Tora-kun so... yea o_O Disclaimer: We own nothing releated to yugioh.)  
  
Badru had been trapped in the dark for a long, long time. He could barely remember anything for a while, just that it had been over, that his soul was no longer with his body and he thought he should have been dead. So he stayed in the darkness, silent, unable to move or speak or breathe or feel. Instead he brooded on what had happened, how it should have happened. It wasn't his fault he had ended up where he was... It was really the fault of quite a few... So he sat in the darkness, wondering if he would recieve a chance to pay them back for the pain they had caused him, and knowing he would take the opportunity if it ever presented itself...  
  
~  
  
Kanaye was walking along the street, taking his last free day before he had to go to the local school to look around, through shops. Kanaye was more or less obsessed with collecting things, and that was what he was looking to do today. He put his hand into the pocket of his bright red jacket and felt the large roll of cash inside. It was really only about twenty bucks, but almost entirely in ones, so the bulk of it made Kanaye feel richer.  
  
He looked at a few stores and even went inside a couple, getting many strange looks. Of course, he was used to it by now, being about sixteen and having dealt with stares all his life. A lot of the looks were because of his slightly abnormal height for his age, but they often lingered on his hair, black with a thick white stripe, and his eyes, which shone an uncommon shade of orange-yellow.  
  
Turning down a street that was much quieter than most of the others he had been on that day, he looked at the available stores. On the right side of the street was some clothing store that he had no interest in, and on the left were a row of apartments followed by a single, small store that proclaimed it's name to be "ANTIQUES", using a sign that was itself probably older than Kanaye. He walked up to the door, looking into the large display window through the corner of his eye. Seeing that another small, paper sign within said "open", he pushed the door and entered with the sound of an old bronze bell.   
  
Kanaye began to walk inside, although there wasn't far to go. The whole place was packed with stuff, the walls covered in bookcases and shelves stacked with objects, and tables haphazardly thrown across the floor piled with quite ancient looking things. There was a back room to the store, made off-limits by a long glass display case that also appeared to be used as a counter for transactions. Inside this case he noted piles of jewelery, golden artifacts and other rare things that were most likely safer inside the case.  
  
Then something caught his eye-- there, next to an aging bronze ring and a silver taper candle holder, was what appeared to be a mirror, it's large, almost two feet of round frame black with shining golden cobras twirled around it. He kneeled down to get a closer look, blinking. He felt strangely drawn to the mirror, and wished the glass were gone so he could touch it.   
  
Suddenly someone came out of the back part of the store and Kanaye stood up to look at her. She was a bit dusty and looking ruffled, with long wavy blue hair with eyes that matched exactly, and a flower in her hair that, strangely, appeared to be a blue daisy.   
  
"Are you interested in something, kid?" she said, smiling at him brightly and brushing a little dust off the front of her white apron. Kanaye blinked a bit, sort of resenting being called a kid when the girl looked like she was only one or two years older than him herself.  
  
"Uhm... Yes... I'd like to know how much that mirror there is," he said, still holding his hand to the glass as if it would simply part for him. The girl leaned all the way over the case, partly crawling over it, and looked at the mirror upside down.  
  
"Well......... It's real, pure gold, not to mention it's a real ancient treasure... I'm willing to haggle on it but I think at least two hundred would be a good starting point, hm?" Kanaye's heart sunk. He couldn't even dream of having that much. He had no job yet and probably wouldn't be getting one soon, with all the hurry of moving and all. Nodding as if he understood and would think about it seriously, he knelt back down. The storekeeper gave him a suspicious look then slowly went back to the back part of the store, looking back several times at him.  
  
What was he going to do about the mirror? He wanted it so much without even knowing why. It almost felt ridiculous. Even though he had always loved to collect things, he hadn't ever wanted to steal. It had occured to him once or twice, but he wasn't a theif by nature. He respected other people's property, always. But now he felt as if he had to have that mirror, like it was the most important thing he could ever take, to touch and hold.  
  
He was beginning to feel very strange, as if he was being watched, a nervous pulse. He stole a glance over the case and saw no blue haired girl. Looking back at the mirror, he once again raised his hand to the glass. And the closer he got, the stronger that strange feeling became. finally he pressed his hand to the glass as he had before, wishing that the clear glass barrier was no more.  
  
Then there was a tiny, sickly cracking sound that Kanaye heard only faintly, thinking it was in the back of his mind. But then he saw a single crack running across the glass very slowly, starting from the place where his palm touched it. He jerked back, leaning away from the case. He hadn't been leaning that heavily on it, to cause it to break.  
  
Once the fault in the glass reached the end of the pane, it began to spread. From the single crack was spreading hundreds of tiny ones, running over the entire glass and making a sort of spiderweb pattern. Then all of a sudden the glass collapsed, with an only slightly loud tinkling it fell to the ground in front of him.  
  
Kanaye reached toward the mirror. This time his hand hit nothing and he pulled it out, standing and holding it to his chest before backing out of the store. As he left, the bronze bell rang again, and, terrified, he took off down the street at a full run for home. No one was going to take it back, now that it was his.  
  
(And so we come to the end of the prologue . Tora-kun and I will try our best to update this... somewhat as often as possible. Any comments?) 


	2. Chapter 1

(Co-written by Tora-kun Disclaimer: We do not know Yu-gi-Oh... is it needed to say that every time?)  
  
A week of painful school had dragged by slowly and it was finally Friday. Malik was forced by his sister to be enrolled into Domino High school, because she wanted him to do something more than sit around. Along with him, he was sitting in the classroom with Ryou, Yugi, Seto and Chikara; as well as Joey, Tristan, Téa and a dozen other students. They were all sitting in English class, all glad that the teacher had stopped talking.  
  
"This must be the most boring class on earth, I tell ya." groaned Joey as stretched. "Man, the only things I look forward to here are lunch and the last bell."  
  
Tristan agreed but the others just gave the two strange looks.  
  
"What?" they asked in unison.  
  
"Typical." said Téa, rolling her eyes. "Why am I not surprised all of the sudden."  
  
"Well, look who's talking, miss goody two-shoes." growled Joey. "You're just a born teacher's pet."  
  
Téa narrowed her eyes. "I am not, Joey Wheeler!"  
  
Yugi shook his head at the arguing and glanced around the classroom. He spotted Kanaye taking short glances back at the group. It was mostly directed at Seto, Ryou, and Chikara and it was starting to worry Yugi slightly. He felt a chill run down his spine when he made eye contact with Kanaye. It was like he was watching them all. Not Joey, Tristan, Malik or Téa; just those four.  
  
'I wonder what the matter with him is,' he thought to himself silently, looking back at his notebook. 'He usually keeps to himself and doesn't look so... I guess suspicious.'  
  
The bell rung for lunch and most of the students ran out of the classroom, mainly Joey and Tristan. The rest of the group made their way to the cafeteria at their own time and somewhat sat within the same group of tables.  
  
"Hey Kaiba." Called out Joey. "What are you sitting here for, eh?"  
  
"Look, Wheeler. I'm only sitting here because Chikara asked me to. Now go back to stuffing your face and do it quietly. You are disgusting me." Snapped Kaiba.  
  
"Whatever you say, Kaiba-boy." Taunted Joey.  
  
Seto winced at that horrible pet name and continued to eat his lunch like any other person. The group started talking about how their classes were going and other chatter, while Malik, Seto and Chikara remained quiet. Malik side-glanced at Chikara. She had her chin resting on her hand as her elbow was propped up on the lunch room table and chewed up a pen lazily, staring into space; strands of her dark purple hair over her face.  
  
"You're doing that too much." Said Seto as he nudged her elbow.  
  
Chikara blinked and looked at him out of the corner of her eye, holding the pen still in her mouth.  
  
"It's a bad habit. Something wrong?" Asked Seto.  
  
Chikara swung the pen in her mouth and went back to staring at the table. "It's fine."  
  
All at once, something eerie crept up to Malik's, Yugi's, Ryou's and Chikara's consciousnesses. Chikara's pen fell out of her mouth and the group went quiet, looking at the four. Ryou nudged Malik and whispered to him.  
  
"Did you feel that?" he asked quietly.  
  
Malik nodded and looked around cautiously with his eyes, not moving another muscle. He didn't find anything too strange but he saw Kanaye watching them in secret then ducking out of the cafeteria.  
  
"Hel-lo. Earth to Yugi, Ryou, Malik, Chikara……… one of you." Said Joey as he poked the closest people to him; Ryou and Yugi.  
  
Ryou sweatdropped and rubbed the back of his head. "Sorry about that, Joey. My mind was somewhere else, if you know what I mean."  
  
"Uh... huh. I suppose the other three were day dreamin as well." said Joey, giving Ryou a skeptical look.  
  
Yugi scratched the side of his face nervously. "Oh, Ryou. You were telling us about what we all could do this evening."  
  
"Ah yes. I got sidetracked, sorry." Apologized Ryou. "As I was saying before, why don't you all come to my house this evening and we could all just hang out, I suppose. We could just play games or sit and chat. I'm sure yami won't mind, even if you brought your own yamis with you."  
  
Malik laughed nervously and thought about his own yami. "A...heh... I'm sure that he'll be thrilled..."  
  
"What about you, Kai-ba?" Asked Joey in an annoying voice. "Is your master going to make you hang out with us?"  
  
He shrank back slightly as he got two icy glares shot at him; one each from Seto and Chikara. "Man, you two were made for each other. You both are as mean as bull dogs."  
  
Chikara rolled her eyes and stuck her pen back in her mouth. "Whatever..."  
  
"... You know that was on the caf table." Noted Joey.  
  
"... What's your point-Oh..." Chikara took the pen out of her mouth and made a face of disgust.  
  
Most of the group snickered, expect for Malik and Seto. Malik stared down at his uneaten lunch in deep thought. He blinked and shot a glare at Joey and Tristan when two balls of paper hit him in the head. The two boys put up their hands defensively.  
  
"Don't look so glum, Malik." Tristan said nervously, shoving Joey into his view. "It was his idea."  
  
"Hey!" Protested Joey. "You traitor!"  
  
Seto shook his head. "Acting like two year olds..."  
  
"So... do we agree with Ryou's idea?" Asked Yugi, trying to change the subject.  
  
The group more or less agreed to the idea and wandered off on their own ways to spend their own time on the remainder of the lunch hour. The school day seemed to drag on almost endlessly as Ryou, Yugi, Malik and Chikara felt quite distracted by the odd occurrence from lunch.  
  
"See you at your house after dinner, Ryou." Said Yugi as he waved and started to walk home.  
  
The others said their temporary goodbyes and went on their own ways to get home. Kanaye had heard the short conversation and started walking off of the school grounds himself, keeping his head down and his eyes shadowed by his hair.   
  
He walked a few blocks until he reached a small street and entered a large apartment building, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a key. After going up a couple flights of stairs Kanaye used it, unlocking the door to his apartment and slinking in suspiciously. He looked around and saw no one, but he wasn't really surprised. His parents wouldn't be home, they both worked quite late.  
  
Kanaye dropped his bag and his keys on the coffee table and went back into the kitchen where a note on the fridge told him that he should make a TV dinner if he was hungry. Sighing, he opened the fridge and grabbed a can of soda, walking back into the living room and into his own bedroom.  
  
His room was still almost completely in boxes, but he had put up shelves everywhere and most of them were stacked neatly with interesting things. The most interesting thing, however, was hung neatly over his desk-- The stolen mirror. He sat down, looking up at it a bit shyly, as if it were a camera, and then trying on a smile. He messed with his hair with one hand, a useless gesture that just left it exactly the same. Then Kanaye stood, leaning closer to the mirror.   
  
For a moment everything was normal. But then Kanaye noticed a strange darkness in the background of the mirror's reflection. It began to get darker and soon he was looking at his own completely unchanged reflection against a pure black background.  
  
To anyone that would have been watching him, there was no physical change. But at some moment, what was beneath the skin became completely different.  
  
He closed his eyes and a wide grin spread across his face.   
  
"This definitely feels better," Badru, who was now in control of that body, mumbled to himself, crushing the can in his hand and enjoying the feeling of the cold, bubbly liquid sliding down his hand. "Very... very very much better," he repeated, dropping the can, licking the soda off his hand and making an approving little "Mmm."  
  
He stood from the chair and looked around the room, eyeing the things that surrounded him. Then he looked down, and had to force himself not to scream. His cloak was gone..! He had had more things in that cloak than were in this whole room, and he wanted them back.  
  
He made a weird, somewhat angry sounding noise and slammed his elbow into the wall, making a few things shake and at least one or two fall to the ground. Then, looking at the falling objects he noticed the mirror.  
  
"At least something of mine isn't gone," he said to himself, looking at it. But instead of being shiny and reflective, it was completely black and clouded. Grinning a bit, he touched the surface of the glass and watched a movement reminiscent of rippling water spread across it.  
  
"Where are the others now..." he said, remembering what he had thought of while he had been imprisoned in the same mirror he was looking at. Maybe he could get his revenge... And he would definitely enjoy it.  
  
The golden snakes curled around the sides glowed dangerously, and the black clouding in the glass faded, showing a small scene as if through a window. Badru squinted, taking in the scene. There were quite a few people hanging around, talking and mostly looking happy. His eyes darted from person to person, seeing a few he didn't recognize, and quite a few he did. He looked over the familiar faces of the pharaoh, Sanura and Bakura. Then he paused, staring at Bakura, and the glass focused in on him just like a camera.   
  
Badru remembered the way Bakura had treated him, and he was more than ready to start his slight spree of insanity with the mind of the tomb robber. Touching the mirror again, this time with only one finger, he muttered something quietly in Egyptian then stepped back to watch what kind of chaos the spell of the mirror would cause.  
  
Bakura leaned back on a wooden chair in the kitchen, cringing from the laughter coming from the living room. "Damn Ryou. I would rather be out, torturing people's worthless souls."  
  
Malik shook his head slowly. "You do that no matter what, Bakura."  
  
Malik's darker half, Marik, was sitting in another chair, staring at the ceiling boredly. "This bites… I could be killing people but noooo… my aibou convinced me this would be interesting."  
  
"Damn it, yami, I'm not having any fun either." Sighed Malik as he went to the refrigerator for another soda. "Anyone else want one?"  
  
"If it has liquor, I'll drink anything." Muttered Bakura.  
  
Malik shrugged and started rummaging through the fridge. Bakura sighed and mumbled Egyptian curse words under his breath then felt an unbearable pain in his left arm. He clutched his arm tightly and yelled an extremely loud string of curse words as he fell out of his chair, feeling his arm burn horribly.  
  
"And that cuts your life points in-" Joey was cut off by the screaming. "...Half..."  
  
The group in the living room all turned their attention towards the kitchen and heard yelling and many crashes.  
  
"GET OFF OF ME!" Marik yelled, pinned down by Bakura and getting choked by his throat.  
  
The pupils of Bakura's eyes had shrunk considerably and he slammed the back of Marik's head into the kitchen floor. "Shut up!"  
  
"Hey, you two! Cut it out, Ra damn it all!" yelled Malik as he dropped the soda cans on the floor. "You two try to kill each other too much! Stop it! It isn't funny!"  
  
Marik desperately tried to pry Bakura's death hold off of his neck. "Get him... OFF!"  
  
Malik's eyes widened as he witnessed his darker half being suffocated. "Ryou! Damn it; get your ass in here! Get your yami!"  
  
"I'm going to kill you, you worthless bastard! You're going to die right here and NOW!" hissed Bakura as he started tightening his grip.  
  
Malik tried to pull Bakura away but got the killing attention turned to himself. "Bakura calm down-... Bakura NO-ARGH!"  
  
Bakura latched his death grip on Malik's throat with one hand and grabbed a long sharp knife from the kitchen counter. Marik was coughing like crazy to get his breath back when Ryou ran into the kitchen.  
  
"Yami! Stop it! What the bloody hell are you doing!?" Yelled Ryou, in utter shock. "You're going to hurt them!"  
  
Bakura turned and looked at Ryou with a spine-chilling insane smirk. "That's the idea, dearest aibou of mine! Perhaps you would like to go FIRST!"  
  
Bakura pushed Malik down to the floor and advanced towards his aibou, licking the blade of the knife slowly and insanely. "It'll only hurt for a moment; Ryou... then it'll be all over... Unless I decide to torture you to shreds!"  
  
"Yami? What's wrong?! Someone help us here!" said Ryou as he quickly glanced back towards the living room.  
  
When he looked back, his yami was right in his face and turning the knife slowly. Ryou gasped sharply as he felt his throat being constricted by Bakura's death grip and the knife slowly being brought towards his chest. At that time, Bakura was laughing psychotically when Yugi and the others skidded to a stop in the doorway of the kitchen.  
  
"Oh boy..." Gulped Joey. "We're in trouble."  
  
Yami narrowed his eyes and hid Yugi behind him. "What is the meaning of this tomb robber?"  
  
Bakura didn't answer. He was enjoying the fact that his hikari was suffocating slowly and was dying in his hands.  
  
"Tomb robber!" Growled Yami. "Stop this right now! You are going to kill him!"  
  
Bakura just laughed in reply to Yami's so called threat and continued to inch the knife closer to Ryou's chest. Suddenly, a pair of arms grabbed his arms and Bakura missed his target, slicing the knife across Ryou's upper arm. Ryou fell back from the sudden retaliation of Malik and put one hand to his neck, breathing heavily.  
  
"What's the matter with him?!" asked Ryou, starting to panic as he glanced at the gash on his arm.  
  
Bakura swung around violently, trying to get loose to resume his killing. "You pathetic mortal! Ahaha! You can't do anything to me! You cannot stop me!"  
  
Malik's grip fell short of holding the insane tomb robber at bay when he stumbled and fell back, holding Bakura's ripped shirt in his hands. Bakura dismissed his shirtless delay and was about to attack Ryou again, only to be strongly tackled by Marik and pinned to the ground.  
  
"One of you gawking idiots help me!" Hissed Marik as he pinned Bakura's hands behind his back and slid the knife across the floor.  
  
Seto, convincing himself to help, and Yami ran into the kitchen and held Bakura's head and legs down. Something caught Marik's eye on one of Bakura's arm and he moved his hand slightly, to see a black cobra marking wrapped all the way up his arm.  
  
"What the hell?!" Said Marik out loud as he touched it. "OW! Ra damn it, that burns!"  
  
The cobra pattern glowed gold and made a frying-like noise, as Bakura lashed around violently, screaming in pure agony and then his body went limp.  
  
Ryou swallowed nervously and wrapped a kitchen towel around his cut arm. "Is he..."  
  
Yami leaned forward a bit and turned Bakura's head. "No, he's alive. He is just out cold."  
  
Joey cringed. "And drooling."  
  
"Guys," started Téa. "Does anyone know what's going on around here?"  
  
Tristan slapped his forehead. "If we knew, we would do something about it, now wouldn't we."  
  
Téa glared at Tristan and huffed. She looked back towards the group and noticed that Marik, Malik and Yami were staring at something.  
  
"What is it?" she asked.  
  
"It is a picture of a snake...and it coils all the way up the tomb robber's arm." Yami said, inspecting the marking.  
  
Seto got up and crossed his arms. "Something always goes wrong with you around, doesn't it?"  
  
Yami scowled and stood up himself. "Look, Kaiba. We don't have time to argue right now. What the tomb robber did was not normal, for his behavior even. He tried to kill Ryou. We should prevent this next time; tie him down to something."  
  
Marik stood up and hoisted the drooling tomb robber over his shoulder. "Dear Ra, how much does this idiot eat?"  
  
"I don't think I wanna know if it makes him act like that." Joey said nervously.  
  
The others groaned from Joey's comment and returned to the living room.  
  
(And that's chapter one because Tora-kun wanted to end it there o_O) 


	3. Chapter 2

(I should try writing a disclaimer sometime. not this time o_O)  
  
The group sat back down in the living room, a few on chairs and on the floor. Marik put Bakura down into an armchair that was handy and stood at one side, while Yami stood on the other side just in case Bakura was still a bit strange or even completely psychotic when he awoke. Those three made up a sort of corner while the other eight made a sort of semicircle to the right of them.  
  
They sat for a minute or two in silence before Ryou sort of voiced the new primary concern. "Will he still be like... He was, when he wakes up?"   
  
A murmur of unsure answers spread across the group. Yami crossed his arms and looked like he was thinking.  
  
"Have any of you ever seen a symbol such as what was on the tomb robber's arm, ever before?" Yami asked. It was useless; each person shook their heads. He went back to thinking, as did everyone else.  
  
Seto had been pacing a bit, and finally he sat down, next to Chikara, and sighed. "If we don't know what caused this, we should be very careful from now on," he said, a bit quietly, "whatever it was could have only been after him, but it could very we-"  
  
He cut off mid-sentence, drawing in breath quickly with a slight flinch, and leaned sharply forward over his arm, groaning in pain but trying not to scream. Everyone was watching this time as a picture of a cobra curled around his arm, then began to glow in a golden hue.  
  
Slipping off his seat and kneeling on the floor, he let out a scream which got everyone not only watching but also standing, ready for just about anything.  
  
The glow died down a bit and Seto got up slowly, shaking and breathing heavily, keeping his head down. Then he looked up, all the shaking ceasing, and ran toward the first person in his line of sight, which just happened to be the still unconscious Bakura.  
  
Marik stepped in his way, trying to block him and ended up getting tackled, falling back and hitting his head on the arm of Bakura's chair. Seto then started kicking Marik's mostly unprotected stomach and chest, making a noise that sounded like growling.  
  
Yami grabbed him by the back of the collar, trying to pull him away and only managing to get kicked and punched at as Seto flailed around wildly.  
  
"Don't just stand there gawking!" He said, roughly dropping Seto to the ground. He expected him to go straight back for him but instead he spun and ran at Joey, who was standing near the door to the kitchen. He stood there shocked, but just as Seto was about to ram into him elbow-first, he stepped out of the way, and Seto ran into and through the not-quite closed door of the kitchen.  
  
"That was NOT cool!" he said, pulling the door closed before the now mostly insane person on the other side could figure out he had missed and run back in. Clicking the lock closed, he turned and looked at the others, leaning on the door and panting a little.  
  
"This is ridiculous!" Scowled Yami, crossing his arms over his chest. "Whatever is happening is occurring much too quickly for any of us to understand what is going on. First the tomb robber and now Kaiba. This is making no sense at all."  
  
He raised his crimson purple eyes towards Malik and caught the other's gaze. Malik puts his hands up defensively and shook his head. "You've got to be kidding me! I have nothing to do with this and I'm just as clueless are you all are!"  
  
Marik groaned and sat up, rubbing the back of his head in agony. "Besides, if it was either of us, it would have been obvious-OW! Damn it... I think my skull is cracked..."  
  
Most of the group jumped when they heard the kitchen door being rammed into.  
  
"Uh... guys? Can you all stop pointing fingers for a second here? I think Kaiba wants out." Joey said uneasily, taking a few steps away from the door.  
  
Téa brought her clasped hands to her face worriedly, side-glancing around. "Maybe whoever is doing this is taking us down one by one... saving the best for last."  
  
All present eyes were directed to Marik as he stood up. He raised his gaze and was met with the stares of all the conscious people in the room. "Don't look at me like that! You crazy mortals keep making up all these Ra damned assumptions while you do not even know what the bloody hell is going on around here!"  
  
Chikara sat back on the couch, slowly fixing her gaze to Bakura firstly and to the locked kitchen from time to time. Joey looked at her nervously. "Hey there! You're not going to go insane on us too, are you!?"  
  
She remained silent, shifting her gaze back to each place with her face in an expression of puzzlement. 'Bakura... Seto...'  
  
Yugi took a glance at what Chikara was looking at and turned his attention back to her. "Chikara? Is something wrong? Do you know something?"  
  
"Oh, this is just great!" Whined Joey, getting into a panic. "First we got Bakura over here trying to kill people, then we got the older Kaiba trying to kill Marik over there and little miss psycho is probably gonna go crazy on us too!"  
  
Something suddenly came to Chikara's mind, mumbling she said: "Bakura... tomb robber... Seto... high pr-AHHH!" She clenched her head and shut her eyes tightly. It felt as if her mind was being shocked constantly and the pain was getting worse. "Gods damn it all!"  
  
The group looked at her fearfully, preparing themselves in case she was to be cursed as well. Chikara opened her eyes slightly, looking at the coffee table in front of her and the shocking had disappeared, but a pounding headache stayed behind. Yami cautiously approached her and grabbed her arms firmly, searching for any serpent marking. "... There's nothing."  
  
Most of them breathed a heavy sigh of relief, now knowing that they were somewhat spared of another odd occurrence. Yami released his grip on Chikara's arms and looked down at her. "What happened?"  
  
Chikara shook her head, then winced immensely. "I... don't know... I was just thinking of something... can I get some pain killers please? This headache... is killing me..."  
  
Ryou spoke up, after taking a cautious glance at his darker half. "There's a bottle in the bathroom, I'll go get it."  
  
"Get some for me while you're at it... after hitting my head twice in less than... I suppose fifteen minutes..." grumbled Marik as he rubbed the back of his head again.  
  
"O... kay then. I'll just bring the bottle..." Ryou said, then he walked off down one hallway.  
  
Marik sighed slowly and spoke to Malik through their link. // We have another problem... //  
  
Malik, trying not to look too suspicious, looked down at the carpet. / What now? /  
  
His darker half sighed again, running his fingers through his hair then wincing when he hit the tender bruised spot. // Something is going on in Chikara's head and my guess is that her darker half has something to do with it... you barely heard what she was getting at... muttering about the rich boy and the tomb robber... I think she was about to find something out when her own yami stopped her. Her yami knows something we don't and we're going to have to probe around her head to find out... //  
  
Malik was about to reply when he saw Ryou enter the room out of the corner of his eye; shutting off the telepathic link with his own yami.  
  
"Okay…" Ryou said, shaking out a few pills from the bottle he was holding and handing them to Chikara, then doing the same for Marik and dropping the bottle on the table. Both took the aspirin gladly and swallowed it dry. By this time everyone was at least attempting to calm down and things were quiet, except for the noises coming from the kitchen, which became less and less frequent and finally stopped entirely.   
  
Chikara looked back at the door one more time, still holding her head. "Maybe we should check on him... He's... Being really quiet."  
  
Joey, who was still standing at least a bit by the door, shook his head. "And take the chance of letting him out and having to do all that again? No way."  
  
No one seemed to disagree with him, either, and no one moved to open the door. Chikara went back to staring at the table and waiting for the medicine to kick in. It was really annoying, that it was taking so long.  
  
Bakura started to shift in his seat slightly, and all eyes turned to him, wondering if he would still be in the same state mentally.  
  
"Holy-" he said, suddenly leaning forward and clutching his head, followed by a string of words that were definitely not holy. Everyone jumped. They were all nervous about what he would do once he looked up.  
  
And then he /did/ look up, squinting at all of them, then pulling the bottle of aspirin off the table and downing a little more than he really should have and muttering under his breath as everyone continued staring at him, relieved.  
  
"At this rate we'll run out of aspirin," Tristan said. He'd been kind of quiet the whole time and everyone just looked at him funny when he said that.  
  
Bakura stood up and went walking towards the kitchen, noticing the door was locked. Yami walked over to him and pulled him aside.  
  
"I wouldn't go in there yet... There were other developments while you were... Out," he said, quietly enough so the other two wouldn't hear.  
  
"Such as..?" Bakura asked, crossing his arms.  
  
"Kaiba had an episode like yours... Went strangely insane and tried to hurt some of us. We locked him in the kitchen," Yami paused for a moment, letting the words sink in and then continued, "I wanted to ask you, while I have the chance... Have you ever seen any marks such as what is on your arm? He had it as well... Appearing just before he started attacking everything in reach."  
  
Bakura stopped and thought for a moment, looking serious. "I think.... I've seen it somewhere, but I can't quite remember." He traced the path of the snake up his arm. It was still there, but it was black now, like a tattoo, and didn't hurt to touch. The design looked so familiar, it was practically on the tip of his tongue. But there was nothing.  
  
Meanwhile there was a slight tired knocking on the other side of the kitchen door. This time there was a voice behind it, though.  
  
"What the hell is going on? Let me out /right/ now."  
  
~  
  
Badru was sitting in Kanaye's bedroom, on his desk chair, continuing to watch through the mirror. The revenge thing was fun for a while, but it got sort of boring after a few tries. He thought maybe he would finish later.  
  
He still wasn't sure, though, what had happened to Seth. He knew he was there-- All of them were there. That kid hadn't been him, but it was close enough. It had made Badru feel better and that was all that mattered to him.  
  
But, he was still bored. He got up and looked around the room. A pretty simple, normal room. He stood in the middle, looking at the door and slowly spinning in a clockwise direction.  
  
"Door, end table, bed, end table - damn how many of those does he need... wall.. window... table... Hmm... What's that?" he said. He walked up to it and looked. It was like another mirror, but not a very good one. It was square and grayish, not very reflective. How long had he been in his own looking glass? Was this what mirrors were reduced to today?  
  
He looked at the rim, a plane black edge. It was more like a box, really. At the bottom were buttons with writing on them that looked vaguely familiar but not enough. He poked one. Nothing. So he poked another. And another. And another. And with a strange zapping sound, the TV came to life.  
  
Badru blinked. This was definitely weird. There were people inside the box. He laughed a little, and unlike most people would if put in his situation, he caught on right away, watching the action on the screen and mostly laughing at it. Then he wandered out of the room, looking at the rest of the house and looking at things.  
  
The room he walked out into was pretty much tiny and empty. But the door next to it led into another room that seemed to house two people. He opened drawers and closets and rummaged through them without shame. In the dresser drawers there was only underwear, clothes and useless items, but in the closet, other than the clothes and shoes, he found a small case with weapons-- Two handguns, which he had never seen before, and a very nice hunting knife.   
  
Sticking the knife in his pocket, he looked through the boxes on the top shelf of the closet. Inside one of them were official looking papers he could not read and pictures of him.  
  
What were people doing with those? He shuffled around some more, looking at the unfamiliar settings, clothes and other people and realized that it wasn't him, but the person, whoever it was, that he was within. Why did they look exactly the same? He stuck a few of the papers in his pocket to figure out later and put the box back where it belonged.  
  
Just then there were noises from the other side of the hallway door. Badru snuck quickly out of the room he was in, shutting the door quietly and going back to where he had begun, hiding the things he had taken in the bottom of a drawer and letting his presence recede. The real boy that belonged in that body awoke much later, feeling dizzy and confused. He was on his bed instead of the chair, the TV was on, and the mirror was its normal reflective self again.  
  
No amount of staring or touching on Kanaye's part made the mirror change again. For some reason, he wished it would. Maybe next time. Or maybe someone had slipped something in his soda. Hey, it's been known to happen.  
  
~  
  
Seto was let back into the living room but kept getting suspicious looks from most of the others.  
  
"Kaiba," Said Yami as he pointed to one sleeve of Seto's trench coat. "Lift up your sleeve."  
  
Seto gave Yami an unconvinced look but rolled up the sleeve, revealing the identical marking as on Bakura's arm. Yami sighed, rubbing the side of his face in frustration. "This is making no sense at all."  
  
Yugi glanced around at the group, getting an idea. "Hey Ryou. Would it be alright if a few of us stayed overnight? I think the best idea would be to keep an eye on Kaiba and Bakura in case something else goes wrong."  
  
Ryou bit his bottom lip nervously, shifting uncomfortably from his seat. "I suppose so… but the way things look now, we're going to have to take shifts and we'll have to be on full alert in case the same thing happens to someone else…"  
  
Joey put his hands up. "Oh no. I'm not stayin here, that's for sure. It's bad enough that Kaiba looks like he wants to kill me… I don't NEED him actually tryin to kill me. Besides… my dad'll kill me if I'm not home on time, ya know? Sorry to be a downer and all… I don't think he'll kill me literally…"  
  
"Yea, that goes the same for me too, guys." Cut-in Tristan, scratching the back of his head. "My mom doesn't want me to be mugged… or something crazy like that. She's the really overprotective type of mom."  
  
Téa spoke up. "… Looks like I'm not the only one. I got dance practice tomorrow morning and I wish I could stay to try to help. I really do, but I have a recital coming up soon and I can't miss any extra rehearsals."  
  
"It's alright, you guys." Yugi said. "I guess we'll meet up tomorrow then. How about around lunch time in the park?"  
  
The three nodded. Joey actually answered in words. "Sounds good to me, Yug. See ya tomorrow."  
  
They said their goodbyes and left Ryou's house quietly, closing the door behind him.  
  
"Well, I suppose you all should get comfortable if you're staying. What about you, Malik?" asked Ryou.  
  
Malik took a glance at his yami, receiving a quick and almost unnoticeable nod from him. "Yea, we're staying."  
  
For the remainder of the evening, the smaller group sat around silently, some watching television, some reading and only a few just staring off into space of something important. When it approached ten o'clock, sleeping quarters were set up. Yugi phoned his grandfather, just to let him know he was staying the night and Seto phoned one of his staff members to let Mokuba know that he could stay over at his friend's house for the morning.  
  
"Okay. This is going to be a tight fit because of the amount of people. The empty rooms upstairs are my dad's room and a guest room we've had for years. Yugi and Yami can sleep up in my dad's room and Malik and Marik can bunk in the guest room. Chikara and Seto can stay down here, if they like or I'll find some cots or something and that leave my yami to sleep in my room." Explained Ryou. "Now, for the night watch schedule-"  
  
"We'll take it." Marik said, cutting Ryou mid-sentence. "Malik and I can handle the night."  
  
Yami glanced at Marik, raising an eyebrow. "Well thank you… but we should split up the times so at least everyone has some rest. There's four pairs of us so each group will get at least two hours watch."  
  
"Yami and I will take the first shift." Declared Malik.  
  
"… Alright, then I suppose it is settled." Yami said, giving the two an uncertain look.  
  
Everyone else went to their designated sleeping accommodation except for Malik, Marik, Seto and Chikara. The four sat in silence for a few moments, not looking at each other.  
  
"So…" Malik started. "If you two are tired, you may as well-"  
  
Chikara sat in an arm chair silently, one elbow propped up on the arm of the chair and one hand covering her face as she looked down at the rug. "I'm not tired."  
  
"That answers my question then…" Finished Malik, uneasy from the sudden change in mood.  
  
Marik nodded towards the stairs, signaling for his hikari to leave. // Speak to the pharaoh about this…as ungrateful as he is… //  
  
/ You can argue with him later, yami. / Answered Malik as he got up and left the room.  
  
He walked up the stairs, and glanced around, looking for the room that Yugi and his yami were staying in. He found them and knocked on the door.  
  
"Who is it?" Called out Yami as he looked back from the window, then he furrowed his eyebrows. "Oh… it's just you Malik…"  
  
Malik wanted to roll his eyes at that statement but just shook his head slowly. "Can I talk to you for a minute? Alone."  
  
Yami glanced towards the rest of the bedroom. "Yugi's getting a drink. Make it quick."  
  
"Alright. My yami noticed something really weird. Weirder than what happened to Bakura and Kaiba. Chikara was about to figure something out but then something stopped her. My yami thinks it's her own yami that's preventing her from finding anything about these odd events. We only took the first shift to see if we could figure anything out. But if he can't, you're going to have to do it, then probably Bakura. If all else fails, we're going to have to get-" Malik paused, lowering his voice to almost an angry growl. "We'll have to get Shadi…"  
  
Yami stood silently for a moment, letting the words bleed into his thoughts. "I suppose that is logical… but would it not be best to summon Shadi sooner than to make all the suspicion?"  
  
Malik's hatred for Shadi rose slightly. "… You do whatever you want. Make sure you get the second shift, even if Yugi isn't awake."  
  
"Alright then…" Yami answered.  
  
Malik walked back down the stairs and entered the living room, seeing that neither Seto nor Chikara had left the living room. "You know, you two can go share the bed upstairs. You don't have to sleep down here."  
  
Seto hung his trench coat on the coat stand in the front hall and sat back down, opening his laptop. "It's too early to be even tired."  
  
"O… kay then. What about you, Chikara? Are you going to sleep upstairs?" Malik asked.  
  
"… I'll go up later." Chikara answered quietly.  
  
Malik shrugged and sat down on the couch, looking around uncomfortably.  
  
// You know, the only possible way for us to find anything out is that we're going to have to force her yami to say anything… meaning, Shadi is going to do it. // Noted Marik as he crossed his arms.  
  
His hikari sighed. / I know… stop reminding me. /  
  
(And that's chapter 2. We have a reader! Yay! ^_^) 


	4. Chapter 3

(Disclaimer: Tora-kun or I own nothing related to Yugioh. We only claim our characters that we originally made up: Badru, Kanaye, Chikara and Sanura.)  
  
The night continued on and went without any significant occurrences, for good or bad. Each person who had to supposedly take a shift took it, except for Yugi who was too deeply asleep for Yami to consider waking. Chikara showed no signs of anything out of the ordinary, nor did the two victims of the supposed curse. The markings on their arms, however, didn't fade. Seto of course covered it with the sleeve of his trench coat but Bakura couldn't care less who saw it, even though it gave him a slight chill to look at, himself. Mostly because he was pissed about not being able to remember what it was.  
  
Before noon they were all up and ready to go meet the others who had left them yesterday night. After a small debate, they also decided to bring the yamis; leaving them there was risking too much destruction of the area. So they all packed up and started the trek to the park. Well, it actually wasn't that complicated. Yugi just opened the door and said, "Okay guys, let's go!" And they went.  
  
Tristan and Joey were waiting for them at the entrance to the park, and Téa joined them not much later on. The fairly large group talked for a while about the nothing that had happened and finally decided to get some lunch, sitting in a small area by a stand of thick trees that not many people walked near.  
  
While Yugi went off to a nearby restaurant to pick up some food, everyone sat down on the grass and talked, more or less back into the easy routine of yesterday. They didn't know that very close to them was the cause of the troubles they had endured yesterday.  
  
Really, Badru didn't know they were in the park. He'd been pretty busy stuffing his face with the junk food he'd managed to pay for out of Kanaye's pockets, until Yugi came into the restaurant, practically begging to be mugged with the obvious roll of money in his hand. Instead, Badru continued eating and watched him, noting the obvious similarity to the Pharaoh. That jerk. He was thinking about this and munching on chips when Yugi actually approached him.  
  
He was smiling and looked like he was trying to be friendly. The whole thing was completely foreign to him. This guy's face stretched in that expression was something he'd never thought he'd live to see. He probably hadn't, but he wasn't thinking about that.  
  
"Hi there!" Yugi said. He was definitely making an effort to be friendly. "You're the new student that was at school, right? Kanaye?"  
  
Badru sat for a moment, stunned that he was being spoken to by anyone without starting the conversation, especially by one of the people he had targeted to be cursed by a mirror from what may or may not be the hells. Suddenly he realized Yugi was waiting for a reaction.  
  
"Uh... Yeah, that's me," he said, unsure how to speak to the kid.  
  
"I'm Yugi," he said, bowing slightly. He was a little nervous after the way Kanaye had acted in class, but something was making him want to talk to the new classmate, if a bit strange.  
  
Badru watched the bowing with a little less than understanding and just sat there. Yugi glanced around a bit awkwardly and finally decided he wasn't going to be having a very long conversation with this particular person.  
  
"Well... I have to bring food to my friends," he said, rubbing the back of his head, "So I guess I'll see you around?"  
  
"Bring food to them? Why don't you just eat here," Badru said, stretching back in his seat with no apparent interest in the answer to his question.  
  
"Well... Er, we're having a little get-together in the park, I guess you could say," Yugi was getting antsy standing there, having thought the conversation was over.  
  
"Issat so?" Badru said, yawning as he spoke. Yugi barely understood the words, "well, you go have fun then mister ph- Yugi..."  
  
"Um... I guess I will," Yugi said. Something about the guy was starting to creep him out again. Maybe it was watching his eyes too closely. Someone walked into the store while they were speaking, and he swore he saw one slide slightly off to the side, looking at the person coming in while the other stayed trained on him. He convinced himself it was just his imagination as he went and got the food, the bags of which piled high enough in his arms to severely impede on his sight, and left the store.  
  
Badru got up a few moments after Yugi left and shoved some food into his pockets, fitting as much as he could before just walking off and leaving the rest there. In one of his pant pockets was the mirror; well, not the whole thing, but the sphere of darkened glass that it created when it needed to be mobile. He then followed Yugi at a distance, hoping to be able to find out more about his little group, and cause some trouble while he was at it.  
  
Yugi returned to the group and looked around. People were basically separated in their own groups and left the picnic blanket bare.  
  
"... Did something happen while I was gone?" Asked Yugi, setting the bags on the blanket.  
  
Joey looked up with a black eye. "It's just that Kaiba over there, thinks he's too good enough for the rest of us."  
  
"Well, if the mutt wouldn't stop giving me a hard time about this... THING on my arm, maybe I wouldn't have to waste my time beating him to hell." Snapped Kaiba.  
  
"Guys, come on. We aren't supposed to be fighting. We're supposed to be having a good time." Yugi said, using his hands to help him talk.  
  
Yugi continued his attempts to negotiate with the two while the others sat out of it, staying silent. Marik glanced over his shoulder then sharply cuffed his hikari upside the head.  
  
"Take a quick glance behind you and don't make it look obvious." He hissed quietly.  
  
Malik blinked but looked behind him out of the corner of his eye, turning his head slightly. "What... I don't see anything."  
  
"..." Marik grit his teeth and hunched his shoulders slightly. "Someone is watching... and I can sense some very, very powerful black magic... the others are too busy to notice but it's completely noticeable to me..."  
  
Malik glanced around again. "We're a few people short!"  
  
Sure enough, Chikara, Ryou and Bakura were missing.  
  
Marik got up quickly and searched the surrounding area with his eyes. "Damn it... something's up with her and the damned pharaoh should have taken care of it last night!"  
  
He started walking off one direction then Malik saw him take off running. Malik glanced back at the group, who were still preoccupied with the argument and he ran after his darker half.  
  
"Wait up!" he said, trying to keep up with his yami.  
  
Not even a few moments later, Marik slammed to a stop and found the three missing persons. Ryou was kneeling in front of Chikara, who was sitting on the grass under a tree and didn't look too well at all. Bakura stood there, with his arms crossed and the bag of assorted sodas and water at his feet.  
  
Ryou looked up at Marik and Malik. "She took a nasty fall close to here and we don't know why it happened. She may be getting sick or something like that but... I have a hunch that it has something to do with the strange occurrences lately. From what I've heard, she didn't sleep much at all last night, nor did she try eating anything."  
  
Marik flicked his gaze over to Chikara. "And the rich boy is getting a little too anxious. He was fighting with the Wheeler brother earlier, gave him a good bruise across the eye."  
  
"Bakura," Ryou started. "Hand me one of those bottles of water."  
  
Bakura rolled his eyes, lightly kicking one of the bottles over within Ryou's reach. Ryou uncapped it and quietly tried to coax Chikara into drinking some, with little success. Bakura, Marik and Malik stood around, not speaking but exchanging a few tense glances.  
  
Badru watched them from between the tangled branches of a few trees. He was curled comfortably in the nook between two thick branches, munching contently on some of the food he'd taken from the restaurant. His other hand was curled around the orb of the mirror, looking in it at the curved, darkened reflections of Chikara and the four boys around her. The orb didn't do as much as the full-sized looking glass could, but it seemed to be taking a slight affect on the already partially weakened Chikara. Or maybe the fact that she wasn't speaking or doing much of anything was completely due to the fact she'd barely slept and not eaten. He didn't care, as long as she was having some sort of trouble-the whole revenge thing was complicated in theory but once he'd gotten started, it was simple to do. Just attack everyone who made you mad or was close to someone who'd made you mad. Fun. Easy. He was pretty satisfied thus far, and none of them were any the wiser.  
  
Chikara sighed uneasily, closing her eyes and just ignoring the people who were watching her.  
  
"Maybe we should have gotten Shadi last night..." Malik hissed quietly. Obviously not quietly enough.  
  
Chikara sat up quickly, looking at the three. "No! No, you don't need to call him. You keep him the bloody hell away from me or you'll regret it!"  
  
Malik sweat dropped and held his hands up defensively, giving Chikara a wary look. "Alright, forget I mentioned him."  
  
"On any note, we have to get back to the others and make sure that she doesn't pass out again or something." Ryou said, crossing his arms.  
  
Malik gathered the remaining full bottles and cans and put them back in the shopping bag. "I'll go back to the others and say that... uh... you went to get something else."  
  
"Just tell them that we got hung up." Ryou said, trying to help Chikara up to her feet.  
  
He shrugged, turning towards his yami. "Come on, let's go."  
  
Marik gave hikari this look then flicked his gaze to Chikara then back to him.  
  
"Oh. Bakura, let's go." Malik corrected himself.  
  
Bakura raised an eyebrow then followed Malik back towards the rest of the group. Marik looked at Ryou, who gave him a puzzled look in reply when Marik stuck his hand out to help.  
  
"If she passes out again, I'll be able to carry her." He said in a quiet and low tone, keeping his face solemn.  
  
Ryou nodded and held one of Chikara's arms. "Are you alright now?"  
  
"... Yeah... I'm fine, really..." Chikara answered quietly.  
  
They started walking back to where the rest of the group was having lunch and things had seemed as if they settled down. Ryou allowed Chikara to sit down, but she ended up lying on the ground, covering her eyes with one arm.  
  
"Eye. What's wrong with her?" Asked Joey, jabbing a thumb in her direction.  
  
"She's just..." Ryou paused.  
  
"Tired." Marik finished his sentence. "She didn't get much sleep last night because of what's been going on with the rich boy and the blonde, over there."  
  
"I see-HEY!" Joey growled.  
  
"Basically we've found nothing out of the ordinary since last night." Yogi started out, setting his bottle of soda on the grass. "We don't know who's doing this or how they are. There was this one guy in the restaurant. He was really, really creepy. I don't know who he is but he really looks like Kanaye, but different somehow... like his not usual self."  
  
"More evil?" Yami suggested, his arms crossed over his chest.  
  
Yugi thought for a moment, and then nodded slightly. "I guess you could call it that," he said finally, looking at his Yami in question.  
  
"It may be just a coincidence," Yami said, looking over the group assembled there, "but even so, keep on the look out for Kanaye, or anyone who looks like him, in the future. I have a hunch he may be the one who's causing all this trouble."  
  
Yugi stood, more or less blinking at Yami. "Why would you think that?" he asked.  
  
"Isn't it obvious?" Kaiba said, looking over his shoulder at the others. "Some new guy shows up and everyone starts going insane at random... There are no coincidences."  
  
There was an awkward and eerie silence; Kaiba had a point.  
  
"Well, we're just gonna have to teach him a lesson if it is Kanaye that's doin all of this." Joey said, much in an overconfident manner.  
  
Ryou glanced over at Chikara, then nudged his yami. / There she goes again. What can possibly be wrong with her? She didn't bother eating or drinking anything during lunch and I think she passed out again. /  
  
Bakura looked past Ryou, to the now sleeping Chikara. // ... The damned pharaoh knows nothing. He should have listened to Malik and Marik. Ugh... let's end this little meeting early and take her back to your home. If the other mortals want to join then that's just... fine. //  
  
Chikara found herself in a room... a soul room. She didn't know if she was still sleeping or not but she decided to take a glance around. The room that she was in was pretty dark... the walls were covered with all sorts of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that she couldn't even get a clue of what they meant. She saw a few doorways, covered by hanging silk covers of various colors; black, gold, silver, purple. Chikara walked up to the closest doorway, the purple trimmed one and pulled the material back, looking in.  
  
'... What is this place?' She thought, taking half a step in and seeing many ancient Egyptian relics and scrolls lying around on stone tables.  
  
She felt a hard grip on her shoulder and pull her back out of the room. She was about to turn around to see who it was but a dagger was placed at her throat. She was being pulled back by someone, and she swallowed nervously, feeling the blade slightly knick her throat.  
  
"Don't -ever- do that again..." Growled a voice, then Chikara felt something hit her; the whole place going black.  
  
Chikara sat up quickly in a bed at Ryou's house, feeling the wet hand cloth that was on her forehead, fall in front of her. She glanced around hastily, seeing a few people standing in the room.  
  
"Have a nice nap?" Bakura said from the window, looking out towards the street.  
  
Chikara brushed some of her long dark purple hair out of her face and flicked her gaze over to the next person who was in the room; Marik.  
  
"..." She started getting nervous, edging towards the back of the bed.  
  
"There's no reason for you to be too worried, Chikara." Yami said, looking at her from the doorway with his arms crossed. "We're simply concerned of what's going on and we'll have to talk to you."  
  
"What they say is truth, Chikara." Shadi said, walking into the room. "With the extraordinary phenomenon, we need to know more of what precisely is going on. And you, are holding some of the answers." 


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4  
  
[I (tora-kun) wrote the disclaimer! OMG! AHH! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! *Falls over twitching* Err. Anyway. Don't own Yugioh or anything related. Except  
the Chikara/Sanura who is hers *points at bakura13* and Kanaye, who is  
mine. No one wants Badru. He can go home.]  
  
Chikara was halfway off the bed, looking quite unhappy when Shadi walked in.  
  
"What the hell are you talking about," she muttered, half off of the opposite side. Everyone was watching her; it wasn't like she could go anywhere anyway.  
  
"I'm talking about what has been going on lately... You know what I speak of," Shadi glanced around at the others in the room. "The Pharaoh has filled me in. You should have called for me sooner."  
  
Chikara huffed. "Called for you? For what? You don't know any more than we do." She was stuck in a room full of five-thousand-year-old spirits and a very disturbing guy who was staring at her with similarly disturbing and blank eyes.  
  
"No, I don't. But you do," Shadi said calmly, gesturing vaguely with his hand. "I need you to think about it. You were almost stumbling onto a realization earlier, according to the others."  
  
"I don't know anything!" Chikara spat, wondering if she could somehow get out of the room and somewhere relatively safe. Without much more thought on it than that, she took off for the door, trying to duck past Shadi.  
  
She'd misjudged the distance and the people she was up against, though. Yami grabbed her by the back of her shirt and held her an inch or two off the floor. Shadi looked slightly down at her with a blank expression, and sighed.  
  
Chikara struggled for a moment, and then finally gave up, and Yami set her to the ground, his hand still firmly wrapped in her collar.  
  
"So... How are we going to find all this out? You obviously know something, even if you can't quite... Place it," Shadi said, tapping his fingers lightly on the side of his leg.  
  
"I told you, I don't know anything!" she practically screamed. Shadi didn't move, and just watched her.  
  
Suddenly, a snarl replaced Chikara's normal, if unhappy, expression, and she tried to elbow Yami in the stomach. The blow didn't hurt much, but startled him enough to free her as she hurled herself at Shadi angrily.  
  
Shadi stepped out of her way, barely, not flustered. She hit the wall on the other side of the room shoulder-first and spun around, looking at the group watching her. They each noticed it at once--Her eyes shimmered with a crimson hue.  
  
"Sanura," Marik said quietly. She growled in reply.  
  
"So," Shadi said, raising an eyebrow slightly, "It's been you removing these things from Chikara's memory."  
  
"-Her- memory?" Sanura muttered under the growl, "they're -mine-. That's why I've been keeping her the hell out of them. She has no idea what she's playing around with."  
  
"If they're yours, then, I think it would be in the best interest of all our time if you would explain to us just what is going on here," Yami said quietly, from over Shadi's shoulder.  
  
"...And if I decide that it's not worth telling you all?" Sanura asked, her eyes darting to each person in the room, narrowed.  
  
"Then we'll have no choice but to force the information out of you," Marik said, from closer than she'd thought he had been. His hand clamped around Sanura's shoulder, and she snapped her gaze up to meet his.  
  
"Now... You're going to tell us what's going on that you won't tell your hikari, and why," he said, glaring.  
  
Sanura made a very disturbing suggestion as to what Marik could do on his free time. He twitched, and slammed her against the other wall of the corner they'd ended up in. There was a sickly snapping from her shoulder, and she grasped it in pain; it wasn't broken, but it had definitely popped the wrong and worst possible way.  
  
Marik stepped toward her, closing her into the corner with no obvious path out, and grabbed the front of her collar. People sure were pulling on her shirt a lot today.  
  
"Now... Tell us what you know about the little -problem- we've been having lately..." Marik said, quietly but no less stern.  
  
Sanura bared her teeth. No one moved for a moment.  
  
"...Fine," she said, breaking the silence, but then she stopped again, narrowing her eyes.  
  
"You didn't get this information from me," she muttered, looking past Marik at the others, especially Shadi, with an evil glare. "Understand?"  
  
"You're not exactly in the position to be making demands," Marik growled, readjusting his grip on her shirt.  
  
"...My hikari is not to know I exist unless absolutely necessary," Sanura said, "It's important that you at least pretend you got this information from someone else, or I might decide not to tell you."  
  
"The hell you will," Marik said, pulling her forward then slamming her against the wall again, not too hard, but effective still.  
  
Sanura winced, trying to shrug his touch off of her.  
  
"Alright, alright," she said, pushing him away. He didn't move.  
  
"...The people attacked so far are Bakura and the Kaiba boy," Sanura said, attempting to cross her arms, "With the snake emblem. Chikara was attempted earlier, but we have some sort of immunity. It barely did anything. I could feel it, though. Sort of familiar, and I think I know who it is."  
  
She paused dramatically, just to annoy everyone. Yami interrupted, instead.  
  
"Yugi told me a new student here was acting oddly. Could he be connected?"  
  
Sanura glared at Yami, pissed that he ruined her little to-be-continued silence.  
  
"I suppose. There was a guy named Badru, if you remember. He was a pain in the ass. It seems like the people who've been attacked are the people he would be mad at." The others listened, deep in thought now. The name sounded familiar, but most of them couldn't place it exactly.  
  
"The only thing is, I have no idea where he would have gotten that kind of magic from. I don't remember him doing much black magic at all. But, he had a lot of trinkets... He brought a couple of the sennen items with him... Stole from the damned thief, even."  
  
Bakura eyed Sanura lazily. "So there could be a ninth item?"  
  
"No. Well... Yes, there could be, but I don't think that's what we're dealing with. Look at the snakes--why would there be snakes, instead of the millennium eye? But then again... I guess we'll see. We just have to find out where he is."  
  
Badru was watching this whole scene from some back alley, through the now full-sized mirror, and he -wasn't- happy. After all of this, she was just going to blow his cover. Then what? Would they take the mirror? Seal him away, again? He really, really didn't like the way that sounded.  
  
Then it dawned on him.  
  
Everyone he was supposed to be exacting revenge on was in one room. Alone.  
  
Sanura was out, talking. Bakura near the window. The Pharaoh by the door. And Marik--Badru had already figured that the strangest of the group was somehow connected to Seth, despite the other boy's more obvious resemblance.  
  
Oh. And Shadi. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with Shadi. Badru had no reason to hate him. He just did, in the rampant desire to get his retribution for Gods only know what.  
  
So he had the opportunity. What was he going to do with it? He whispered incoherent words, and trained the vision of the mirror onto Marik. First him, then he would get the Pharaoh. Sanura may not have been sufficiently affected, but trapped in a room full of psychos would be more than enough.  
  
He grinned widely, almost ready. The group continued to talk.  
  
Yami slipped out of the room.  
  
"Damn it!" Badru yelled, among other things. He slammed his fist down on the mirror and the surface rocked violently. Beneath his hand, Sanura collapsed, again. She wasn't completely immune to the powers, then. But Badru didn't care. He was too busy fuming about how waiting and thinking had cost him a perfect moment of revenge.  
  
Chikara had one more chance that day to wake up in an unfamiliar place. Yami had walked back downstairs and was explaining the situation at hand when Marik came down the stairs, arms crossed and looked elsewhere quite irately.  
  
"... She's throwing up." He said plainly. "She's not to go anywhere and all of you stupid mortals better keep your guard up or we're all going to be in hell. And you, tomb robber's hikari, go upstairs and get some sling or whatever. Her shoulder is a little... shall we say awkward."  
  
Ryou looked at Marik semi-nervously and walked upstairs to check on the ones still remaining upstairs. He found Chikara curled up on the bed in the guest room and could have sworn that some conflict was happening with her darker half. He touched her shoulder lightly, earning a stiff flinch from her and he retreated his hand a bit.  
  
"This just isn't your day, now is it?" Ryou asked quietly.  
  
Shadi glanced over at Chikara and uncrossed his arms, resting his hands at his sides. "I have a feeling that not all the wanted information was told..."  
  
Bakura growled in reply, keeping his eyes on Chikara and Ryou. Ryou glanced nervously back at his yami then resumed sliding the sling over Chikara's neck and put her arm in it.  
  
/Is something wrong? / He asked his yami.  
  
// Yes, there is. // Bakura snapped back through the link. // Marik's pissed off. Really, really pissed off. Even though Shadi might be correct about Sanura not saying everything... there's definitely going to be some fighting. //  
  
"Oh dear..." Ryou said out loud, earning a glance from Chikara.  
  
"... What? What's wrong?" She asked very quietly, pulling her knees up to her chest and looking at Ryou.  
  
Ryou shook his head nervously. "Don't worry about it. Just worrying about your condition and while we're on that topic, we should get you something to eat at least. How about some soup?"  
  
"... Sure, I guess... I'll go downstairs too... I need to..." Chikara paused. "... Walk around a bit."  
  
Ryou looked at her carefully, back at his yami then back at Chikara. "Alright. If you're well enough to be up."  
  
They made their way back up the stairs, with Bakura sitting at the bottom and Shadi remaining at the top of the stairs for no apparent reason. Ryou searched through the cupboards for a few cans of soup for all of them and Chikara sat at the kitchen table, with some conversation coming from the living room.  
  
"Do you have any preference?" Asked Ryou, still not looking back.  
  
Chikara shrugged, even though Ryou couldn't see it. "Doesn't matter to me..."  
  
"Okay then, let's see here." Ryou said to himself, grabbing a few cans and looking through the drawer for the can opener.  
  
While Ryou had his back turned, he didn't notice Marik slipping into the kitchen and held his hands over Chikara. The next thing he heard was a chair falling and someone yelling from the living room.  
  
"Marik! Let her go!" Yami yelled, running in.  
  
Ryou turned around quickly, seeing that Marik had one arm wrapped around Chikara's neck and he was choking her from behind.  
  
"Stop it! She can't breathe!" He said, taking a few steps forward then stopping hesitantly when a glare was shot from the attacker.  
  
"That little bitch!" Snarled Marik, giving a sharp yank from his grip. "She's hiding something! She knows something and I'm going to damned well force it out of her, even if I almost have to kill her light!"  
  
"That doesn't mean that you have to choke her to death!" Malik said to his darker half, not really knowing what to do. "Yami just let her-"  
  
"Why are her and her light resistant to what's been going on, hm?! Do you know the answer!?" Marik snapped, tightening his arm around Chikara's neck.  
  
The room fell silent, all eyes on Marik and the suffocating Chikara who was trying to pry the death grip from her throat.  
  
"I know she's listening to this, and just like the tomb robber and the damned pharaoh, she won't let anything happen to her hikari. If she does then she is a Ra forsaken coward!" Marik hissed, turning his gaze to Chikara.  
  
[And Tora-kun is weird... and we have another reader ^_^ And yes, I suppose the end of this chapter is a cliffhanger so... I don't know what to say O_o;] 


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5  
  
[Another reader ^_^ Great! Disclaimer: We own nothing related to Yugioh. We only take credit for our original characters that are to be fully listed  
at a later time.]  
  
"Marik! Stop it!" Yelled Yami, starting to advance towards him. "We got the answers that we wanted, now leave her alone! You are hurting her!"  
  
There was an animal-like snarl and sharp cat-like fangs bit into Marik's arm, causing lines of crimson blood to drip down his arm.  
  
"OW!" Yelped Marik, letting go immediately and grasping the bite with his other hand. "So! You finally decide to show your face before your hikari almost chokes to death!"  
  
Sanura narrowed her crimson violet gaze at Marik and twitched her dark purple cat-like tail threateningly. "You'd do the same thing for your hikari if he was being killed..."  
  
Yami crossed his arms, shifting his gaze between the two. "From what Marik said, you are hiding something, Sanura... we need as much information as possible to prevent anyone else from getting hurt..."  
  
"Is that a threat?!" Snarled Sanura, flicking her tail and knocking over the cup of sugar that was on the table.  
  
Yami sighed slowly, closing his eyes then opening them again. "I'll ask you again politely... is there something that you are not telling us..."  
  
There was a heavy silence hanging in the air and Sanura continued to meet Yami's burning glare with her own. Marik clenched the bite wound, drawing more blood out and it started to drip on the floor from being impatient.  
  
"There is hardcore black magic being used..." Sanura said slowly, standing up straight and lightly touching the millennium eye pendant that hung around her neck on a golden chain. "Almost like these items... but more specific for sorcerers..."  
  
"Like you... a sorceress..." Growled Bakura, cracking his knuckles out of angry habit.  
  
Sanura growled back, flicking her hand out in front of her and the necklace disappeared in a bright gold hue, then the glow dissipated, showing a long golden glaive with the eye of Horus connecting the blade to the pole. Yami remained calm, flicking his gaze to the weapon then back at Sanura's face.  
  
"You are all familiar with the powers and abilities that these sacred items have... in ancient Egypt, it proved its value by being several of the most powerful items around... but there were ones who tried to overthrow the Pharaoh... Yami, as you know him..." Explained Sanura, narrowing her eyes at the tri-haired Pharaoh.  
  
"You were one of the ones..." Shadi intervened, standing in the doorway of the kitchen.  
  
Sanura tightened her grip on the glaive, gritting her teeth. "Look... do you want to hear what I have to tell you or not..."  
  
She flickered her gaze around the silent faces, finding no objections.  
  
"As I was explaining... there were many that attempted to overthrow the Pharaoh but then were banished to the shadow realm... the ultimate hell... but there are two of them that existed... claimed the title of goddesses..." Sanura continued on, closing her eyes as if she could picture the exact scene she was talking about. "Keket... Goddess of Darkness... and Uadjit... Goddess of Snake... this is their doing... they are like opposites... Keket enjoys the shadows, while Uadjit prefers the light...."  
  
"Uad-who and Kek-what?" Joey said, confused. "Could you say that again...?"  
  
Sanura opened her eyes, shooting a glare at the blonde haired boy. "Uadjit and Keket... they are very ancient names of Egypt and have never been spoken about... from what I've learned from my hikari's mind... they have records on the two sorceresses and their powers in the museum of Cairo..."  
  
"But we won't have time to go there!" Yugi said, looking up at Yami. "We can't leave anyone behind, not even the attacker or something will go wrong!"  
  
Yami shook his head slowly. "It is alright, Yugi... If my memory serves me correct of these recent times, Isis should still have the Egypt exhibit at the museum... it is under her care and I do not think that she will mind if we did some research. Am I not correct, Malik?"  
  
Malik looked up, his face showing realization. "... Yeah, you're right! I'll go phone my sister and tell her that we need her help."  
  
Sanura looked at the blade of her weapon with half closed eyes and slowly slid a finger down the edge of the knife blade.  
  
"Of course, we will need more of your knowledge, Sanura..." Yami said, interrupting her. "You seem to know more about the two than I recall... you were with them, were you not?"  
  
Sanura flinched visibly, cutting her finger with the sharp blade and looking at the blood that slowly started to drip down her digit. "Like I have a choice..."  
  
Later that afternoon, the large but cautious group managed to be let into the building with Isis speaking to the manager.  
  
"Take as much time as you need to find what you are searching for. All the doors and windows leading to the outside are locked to prevent any intruders from entering..." Isis explained, gesturing towards the Egypt exhibit. "Be very, very careful with the papyrus scrolls and the carvings on the stone tablets... they are very valuable and the Egyptian government has entrusted me to take great care of them."  
  
"Thank you, Isis. We appreciate this very much." Yami said, nodding once.  
  
"Anything for our Pharaoh." Then Isis bowed politely.  
  
Yami turned towards his friends and allies. "Each of you pick a section... if there is too much to sift through, then you may work in groups... remember, we are looking up information of when Egypt was under the rule of my family's name... and the ones Uadjit, Badru and Keket..."  
  
There were nods of agreement and most of the group went off their separate ways. The only ones that remained were Marik, Bakura, Yami, Isis and Sanura. Marik had his arms crossed, the bite wound now bandaged and he was keeping his narrowed gaze on Sanura, while Bakura glanced around the main foyer with the least interest.  
  
"Now if you two, Marik and Bakura, would like to follow me." Isis paused. "And behave yourselves... leaving the artifacts alone, I'll show you the basement storage room with the most dangerous black magic scrolls and items..."  
  
Marik nodded, being actually serious about not plundering the museum and followed Isis towards the stairs. Bakura only scoffed and followed, deciding to keep his word for once. That left Yami and Sanura. Yami let his eyes wander around the statues and relics that sat silently in one of the hallways as he walked through it. Sanura walked beside Yami, using her glaive as a walking stick as the gold made echoing clinking noises with each step.  
  
She lowered her gaze to the ground, narrowing her eyes and muttering. "Uadjit and Keket..."  
  
Yami raised an eyebrow in question and turned his head to Sanura. "Is something else troubling you?"  
  
Sanura's face showed much frustration as she met the former Pharaoh's gaze. 'He is too nosy for his own good...'  
  
Yami turned his head forward, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. "You seem a little less worked up from the first time that we forced you to reveal yourself... and you seem somewhat worn out..."  
  
Sanura hissed, turning her head away to glance at the walls of display cases. "You already know... since my hikari is completely weakened, whatever happens to her happens to me... we're completely linked now... mentally and physically... but she cannot know that I'm here... it's not the right time and it is too dangerous for her... to make it easier on her while she remains asleep in her soul room, I have transferred the weariness and damage to myself..."  
  
"So, you are not as compassionless as I thought... just like the rest of us, you are very protective your aibou..." Yami tried to hide the smirk that tugged on the edges of his lips.  
  
There was not another word said after that as the two continued to take quick glances at the relics that could have some sort of useful clue. There were a few false alarms, seeing as Keket and Uadjit were the names of goddesses in ancient Egypt, but there weren't all too many references to them in that way, so it didn't cause too many problems.  
  
Joey, with, who else but Tristan, were still looking through an extremely large group of official papers and letters, each with a translation carefully set aside, and trying to read through them all for any mention of the Pharaoh's rule or the three supposed sorcerers. After an uncertain amount of time searching, they were almost ready to give up.  
  
"Hanging out with my friends is starting to get like study time... Jeeze, that's not a good sign," he said, stretching and cracking his back a bit, then picking up a handful of translation papers.  
  
He looked down at the top one, skimming it lazily for any sign of Badru, Keket, or Uadjit. After a few papers, he paused again, stopping and putting his finger at the top, and running it down as he read.  
  
"Joey, get back to work... I know this is boring, but we gotta do it," Tristan said, turning and looking to find his friend, instead of slacking, was reading intently.  
  
"Oi, no, look at this," he said, turning and showing the scroll to Tristan, and reading:  
  
"Prisoner records... On the fortieth day of summer, the Pharaoh ordered detained an individual who identified himself as Badru..."  
  
The translation went on to give a careful physical description of Badru, and the clothes he wore, seemingly in case there were two people of the same name; "Black hair, white stripe... Eight braids... Damn, they're thorough," Joey said, reading the rest of it silently.  
  
"And it sounds just like Kanaye," he said, nodding. "Okay, so we have proof that he existed... Let's see if there's anything about the other two around."  
  
Shuffling through a few more papers, he pulled out another, listed in the same type of format, and read it out loud, a bit of nervousness edging across his voice.  
  
"On the third day of spring, the Pharaoh shunned and ordered exiled to the shadow realm two dark sorceresses claiming the names of goddesses and refusing to give any other title; identified as Keket and Uadjit. Keket, with black hair cut a bit short and hanging in many bunches; dark orange eyes; quite tall. Uadjit, with long, yellow hair; brown eyes with no white area; also quite tall... Both were stripped of all possessions and cast into the shadow realm by the Pharaoh himself, testified by his own word..."  
  
There was a woman walking down the street, past the same stores that Kanaye had passed a few weeks before. She walked close against the buildings, trying to stay in their shadow, and somehow managing it although there was barely any shade to speak of. Behind her followed another, a bit taller, her dark yellow hair glimmering in the sunlight that she made no move to avoid. The latter stopped at a corner, crossing her arms and waiting, while the other turned down the street and approached the same antiques store that should be familiar.  
  
Keket walked in, the little bell above the door tinkling irritatingly. She slammed the door behind her, the glass shaking in its frame, and approached the case that doubled as a counter.  
  
The blue-haired girl was evidently taking a nap on the counter, sitting on the other side and letting her arms drape across the glass. Keket sighed, standing a few feet from her and glanced around the room for something to accidentally knock over in order to wake the girl up.  
  
Instead, luckily enough for the expensive things around the shop, the blue- haired girl sat up, wiping some drool off of her chin.  
  
"Uhrm... Welcome, Ma'am," she said, offering her hand. Keket frowned down at it, not really wanting to touch her after she'd so uncleanly wiped the spit off her face. The hand sort of floated in the air uncertainly for a moment, then fell.  
  
"How may I help you today?" she said, inspecting Keket's facial features quietly.  
  
"I would like to ... Sell you something," she answered, pulling out of the pocket of her old-fashioned robes a chain, with a small charm on the end covered in swirling designs.  
  
The girl reached out, this time with the other hand, and held the charm carefully between two fingers.  
  
"Ahh... The Celtic shape-shifter design. One of my favorites," she said with a smile, "What's your asking price?"  
  
"Anything," Keket said, not meeting the girl's eyes directly, instead glancing around the shop curiously, "how much would you buy it for?"  
  
The girl, recognizing a chance for a good deal, opened the old cash register that sat by her left side, and pulled out a twenty. Keket took it without another word and crushed the bill in her hand, letting the necklace fall from her fingers gently onto the counter.  
  
"Good doing business with you ma-" she managed to say, before the door slammed shut, this time barely managing to hold onto its old glass.  
  
Smiling softly, the blue haired girl hung the necklace in the window next to a variety of other trinkets and jewelry, where they could catch the sunlight together glitteringly, and hopefully catch a passerby's eye.  
  
Back at the museum, most of the group was working except for a few. Yami looked down at one of the display cases, which contained some hieroglyphs from his time.  
  
"Sanura, I think I found something-" He turned around to speak with her then crossed his arms.  
  
Sanura had apparently fallen asleep on one of the tables and a book was being held loosely in her hand, showing a picture of a necklace and a few other troubling items. Yami walked over and picked it up carefully, looking over the words, then stopping on a picture.  
  
"... A mirror...?" He said to himself, reading further. "Said to be fabricated by the sorcerers..."  
  
He flicked his gaze to Sanura, narrowing his eyes. "So she was right..."  
  
Yami sat down on a chair, and skimmed through more of the lines. "This may be more handy than I thought at first... now if she is correct about who's attacking us... we have to know who's next... unless..."  
  
He looked back at Sanura, closing the book slowly and got up, walking out to where the others were stationed. 


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6  
  
[Lack of updates, yes .; Lazy Tora-kun -could- have written some of this  
because she has more free-time than I do xX Disclaimer: We own nothing  
related to Yu-Gi-Oh material. We only take credit for the original characters and made-up items that we planned, to be fully listed on a later  
time.]  
  
Marik scowled, walking through the aisles between the bookshelves in the basement, finding next to nothing. He slammed a fist onto one of the wooden tables and swore in Egyptian.  
  
Bakura looked up from a few of the relics that were kept in the basement, furrowing his eyebrows. "What's your problem this time, Marik... Weren't you satisfied in almost killing someone before?"  
  
"There's nothing! This is almost like a wild bird chase with no weapons to kill it!" Marik seethed, narrowing his eyes.  
  
"Personally, I don't like this better than you do but what do you expect... someone's invading our territory." Bakura stated, crossing his arms. "It's our job to torture the pathetic mortals... not some amateur who won't show his face..."  
  
"When I find this Badru individual, I'm going to slice out his insides and force him to eat them..." Marik hissed.  
  
"Marik!" Isis called down from the top of the stairs. "Yami found something, I suggest that you two come up here at once."  
  
"Hmph... so he thinks he can hog all the glory..." Muttered Bakura as he made his way up the stairs. "Are you coming, Marik?"  
  
"In a minute... I'm thinking." Marik replied in a low-tone, glaring at the floor.  
  
Bakura shrugged, and kept walking. "Suit yourself..."  
  
By the time Bakura got to where the Pharaoh was, he was halfway through explaining what he, or more precisely, Sanura, had found. The book lay open on the table, and he was explaining what it said despite the fact that it was there for all of them to see.  
  
"Supposedly called the Serpent's Eye and the Swirls of Shadow... That's probably what we're dealing with, here," Yami said, gesturing to the former, a golden mirror framed with cobras. "It says that they were supposedly created by the two goddesses, Keket and Uadjit... But that's probably just confusion with the rumors, since they're the same names."  
  
"But what about the Swirls of Shadow?" Yugi said, pointing at the picture of a silver and black charm on a long matching chain.  
  
"It says that it's actually a Celtic design," Téa pointed out, squeezing into the group between Yugi and Tristan. "How did it get all the way to Egypt?"  
  
Yami shook his head. "If it has the same kind of enchantments the mirror has, then it couldn't have been made anywhere else. But, the design could well have traveled, especially for the sorceresses who traveled easily," he said, crossing his arms and looking down at the book. "Of course, there were people who traveled the normal way, too...Bringing things from one place to another... In other words, you never know..."  
  
The group stood around the table, looking through the book for a while and at the papers that Joey and Tristan had found earlier, and eventually Marik came upstairs, looking down at the said things seriously then going back down into the basement to continue his own search.  
  
Sanura, meanwhile, was still asleep in the other room, unaware of any of this. Once they were all relatively sure there was nothing else of interest, they decided to pack up for the night.  
  
As they all left in somewhat of a swarm, Seto stopped to wake up the sleeping Sanura and they started home, walking side by side.  
  
At some point walking towards Chikara's house, Sanura's hold on her seemed to gradually weaken until, by the time they were on her doorstep it was only the owner of the home that remained. Seeming a bit dazed, she said goodnight to Seto and watched him walk off, standing with the door halfway open.  
  
There was still a bit of light outside, mostly from the almost-but-not- quite-full moon and the remnants of the setting sun. Chikara yawned, feeling a bit tired but not enough to go to sleep, and decided to go for a walk instead, despite having promised Kaiba she would stay home.  
  
She walked down random streets, almost getting herself lost in the process. She didn't look up much, trudging down the street, and accidentally found herself at a dead end. Turning, a glint of light caught her eye, and she stopped to see what it was.  
  
In the display window of a small shop were hung many glass, crystal, and silver trinkets, but in the slowly dispersing light there was almost no reflection from them. One was casting back an amazing amount of light, though-- a small silver charm placed in an inconspicuous place, reflecting the light of the moon, the pattern seeming to dance.  
  
Chikara walked a bit closer, looking through the glass of the display. Something on the face of the design was cast in shadow as the light moved along its surface, as if part of the charm was hiding. Slowly, nervously, she tested the door of the Antiques shop. It opened smoothly and with a gentle tinkling.  
  
The blue-haired shopkeeper had been staying late. She sat on top of her glass case/counter, shining a set of sterling goblets with a small white cloth. Chikara watched her out of the corner of her eye, nervous, and the blue-haired girl gave Chikara the same courtesy.  
  
She walked to the inside of the display she had seen from the window, and found the charm among the bunch. It wasn't all that hard to, really, since it was still glimmering even from the inside of the shop. She unhooked the chain and pulled it down carefully, taking a good look at it. It seemed to grin back at her with tiny, hidden secrets.  
  
As she turned the tiny, coin-like bauble in her hands, the shadows along the face of it seemed to part for her momentarily, allowing her to see scratches along the inside parts of the design that one would normally never notice. But then, the charm was dark again, in fact, darker than before, as if there were no moonlight whatsoever, and no matter how she turned it to the dim inside light, she could see no scratches at all along the perfect, silver surface.  
  
"How much is this?" She asked the blue-haired girl, raising the necklace up for her viewing, in the palm of her hand.  
  
Something odd clicked in the girl's mind, and it blurted out of her mouth before she could say anything. "Five dollars," she said, then shut her mouth. Her mind kicked back into gear right at that moment, and she mentally slapped herself. She'd lose too much money if she sold the thing for five, why had she said that?  
  
Chikara lowered her hand, looking at the perfectly round shape against her palm, and digging in her pocket. Five, five- yes, there was a five in her left pocket, along with a bit of change. She took it out and handed it to the shopkeeper, who took it with a pained smile on her face.  
  
"It's perfect for you," she said, sliding off the counter and avoiding eye contact as she put the money into the register, "I'll look forward to doing business with you again sometime."  
  
Chikara mumbled some kind of agreement as she left, hooking the necklace and leaving the store in the quiet, darkened night. A few minutes later she walked back in her home tiredly and trudged back up the stairs, collapsing on her bed. She felt sick, she felt tired and she just wanted to sleep until the afternoon of the next day. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, hearing complete silence in her home.  
  
Elsewhere at the second floor of the Game Shop, Yugi sat in his room in pajamas and Yami was leaning on the study desk, looking at the carpet in deep thought.  
  
"Yami," Yugi's voice broke through his thoughts. "Are we really going to find out who's doing this before something else happens?"  
  
Yami sighed. "I really don't know, Yugi. It's hard for me to remember so far back to one particular person... He didn't receive the best treatment, that's for sure. He was quite rude as well but where are the ones that gave him the mirror, if he has it..."  
  
Yugi sat cross-legged on his bed and watched his yami think. "Yami?"  
  
"Yes Yugi?"  
  
"What if we can't stop Badru or Kanaye or whoever he is at the moment?" Yugi asked again.  
  
Yami looked at his aibou uneasily then closed his eyes, turning his head slightly away. "Don't worry about it, Yugi. We're bound to be on the right track so don't worry yourself over this and get some sleep. We'll talk more about it in the morning."  
  
'If you say so...' Yugi thought to himself, climbing under the blankets.  
  
"Goodnight, Yami."  
  
"Sleep well, Yugi." Yami waited a few minutes longer, thinking, then walked into the hallway to greet Shadi.  
  
Shadi bowed slightly towards his pharaoh, having to wait in the hallway. "We meet again, Pharaoh."  
  
Yami nodded, crossing his arms and leaning on the closed door to Yugi's room. "Did you, by chance, be able to track where the mirror is originating from?"  
  
"It is quite unfortunate. Only when the powers of the looking glass is awakened, can I tell you the location of the user." Shadi said gravely. "It is not like the millennium items. The ankh cannot tell me the location of the strange item that uses pure black and shadow magic."  
  
Yami trailed his eyes up to the dark ceiling. "Then perhaps more things are not being told to us than we thought... Marik seems quite angry at the fact that Sanura is not completely cooperating and this could prove dangerous." He paused and frowned. "But it was Sanura who was in contact with those sorceresses all those millennia ago..."  
  
Shadi remained silent, shifting his gaze to the window.  
  
Yami quirked an eyebrow and looked at him. "What is it?"  
  
"It seems that our foe has not given up, even though it is reaching the peak of night." Shadi explained. "Come quickly. We must hurry." Then he smoothly and silently walked down the hallway, into the darkness.  
  
Yami stood up straight and followed, lowering his arms back to his sides. A while later Shadi stopped, looking up the pathway of Chikara's home.  
  
"Something else is wrong." His voice tinted with a bit of wonder. "Was there any other sort of connection between the looking glass and the sorceresses?"  
  
"Yes, there was..." Yami said slowly. "There was a necklace. It was called the Swirls of Shadow and it was made by the same pair who fabricated the mirror."  
  
"Then that will explain why I feel the similar presence in two locations... Can you sense the heavily used black magic, Pharaoh?" Shadi asked, keeping his eyes forward.  
  
Yami concentrated for a bit, staying silent for a while until he felt the presence of the two newly discovered items. He clenched a fist uneasily, shifting his eyes towards the darkened end of the street and back at the house. "This can't be. Badru has the mirror, does he not? Then who has the necklace..." Shadi gestured towards Chikara's house. "Take your guess..."  
  
"But... If it's her, how did we not notice this before?" Yami asked, a bit startled.  
  
"This is new... I didn't feel the same presence only a day before," Shadi replied, starting up the path towards the door. Yami followed him, after hesitating for a moment.  
  
"So she's ended up with it.... This can't get much worse..." The Pharaoh muttered, as Shadi stopped at the thresh-hold, peeking through the glass of the ornamental door. He put his hand lightly on the doorknob, and the whole thing swung open.  
  
Both suppressed the urge to jump from surprise and looked in, finding no one. Apparently Chikara had left the door not completely closed after being so tired. Shadi walked in slowly, and Yami followed close behind, down the hallway.  
  
"Chikara?" He spoke loudly enough to be heard from most of the rooms nearby, but no one answered. The house was engulfed in silence.  
  
"She's most likely sleeping..." Yami muttered, mostly to himself. He started towards what looked like bedrooms, pushing each door he passed open a few inches with his foot, and looking in.  
  
Chikara didn't know how long she had lay on her bed before she fell asleep, but the rest came eventually, welcomed after being so tired. She found herself in a dream place, where the shadows seemed to move with a breath of their own.  
  
It was terrifying in one way, but in another, the shifting mass of darkness reminded her of the necklace she had seen in the store. The dream weighed down her mind, and it took a moment before she remembered that she had the necklace, now. She reached up and wrapped her hand around it, feeling the cold, lightweight of it in her hand.  
  
When Yami opened the door to Chikara's room, he stopped suddenly, narrowing his eyes, then silently waved Shadi down.  
  
They looked through the now wide-open door of the room. Inside, there was no light except the sickly, scattered moonlight that made it through the curtains. But every dark place seemed to be crawling with an unidentifiable -something-, moving and twisting and living within each shadow.  
  
Yami quickly threw his hand into the door and flipped the light switch, destroying the illusion--if that's what it was--and throwing what was left of it into bare pools of darkness on the floor.  
  
Chikara stirred, bothered by the sudden light in the room, and opened her eyes slowly. By the time she was awake enough to register anything, Yami was standing by the foot of her bed and watching her silently, and Shadi was next to her, his hand wrapped around the one of hers that covered her necklace, moved there in the dream.  
  
"What is this?" He said, before she got a chance to speak, and trying to pry her fingers away from it. Chikara only growled, sitting up and pushing his hands away.  
  
"What the hell are you doing here!? Can't I even sleep anymore without you people coming out of nowhere and bothering me?" She growled, starting to stand. Shadi moved out of the way, but grabbed her by the shoulder when she went to walk past. Her hand was still clamped tightly around the necklace, as if afraid to let it drop.  
  
Shadi squeezed the shoulder he was holding sharply--It was the same one that had been injured not long ago, and it still hurt severely when touched. Chikara flinched, looking up at him.  
  
"What are you trying to hide from us." He said. It wasn't a question, really; Chikara could tell he knew what was beneath her hand.  
  
"It's none of your business... Why do you care?" She said. She thought to force her fingers to unwrap from their spots, but suddenly she could see something strange--shadows seemed to be gathering around her palm.  
  
"Chikara, let go of the necklace and give it to us," Yami said, stepping towards her. The feeling of black magic in the room was growing stronger, building along every shaded point in the room, but mostly from the necklace, and resonating from another point as well. Badru was alone somewhere dark, watching this from the face of the looking glass.  
  
Yami moved toward Chikara to take the Swirls of Shadow from her, but it was too late. By now, the darkness had gathered around her closed fist, pulling itself around like the item's name suggested. There was a dark glow from beneath, and the same design from the necklace seemed to have engraved itself onto the back of her hand.  
  
She let go of the necklace only then, opening her hand in front of her, then closing it. The darkness that had gathered followed, then seemed to solidify into a long pike. She backed up, holding it at the ready against both Shadi and Yami.  
  
"No." Her voice was her own, but flat, too calm. Her eyes were the same color, but darker now, more endless. The shadows in the room seemed to be venturing further out from the light now, ignoring the rules as if rallying to her call.  
  
"You're not taking it away," She said, quietly. 


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7  
  
[Aye, we have this chapter done so soon. Disclaimer: We do not own Yu-Gi- Oh. We only take credit for our original characters that follow. The ones created by Bakura13 are: Sanura, Chikara and Keket. The ones created by  
Tora-kun are: Badru, Kanaye and Uadjit. The items were created by us originally just because we were bored and decided to use them during role-  
play.]  
  
Yami clenched his teeth as he flicked his eyes over to every moving shadow across the floor. "Chikara, that is enough!"  
  
Chikara's frown turned into a slow sadistic grin as she pointed the pike at the former Pharaoh. "You're not in the position to tell me what to do..."  
  
She stopped, the grip on the pike loosening as she put a hand over her face and winced, still glaring at Yami.  
  
"Come on, Chikara. You can fight this! Don't let them use you!" Yami said, stepping forward.  
  
"Shut up!" Chikara hissed as she glared back through the spaces of her fingers; the eye of Horus glowing brightly on her forehead. But it wasn't glowing completely gold, the interior of the eye outline was glowing a dangerous burning black while the outside had a gold hue.  
  
The room dropped into complete silence as Chikara glared hatefully at Yami as she breathed through her teeth, almost hissing. Shadi moved his gaze over to Chikara's shoulder curiously, thinking that her image was jumping slightly then got a glimpse at what was really there. Chikara lowered her hand back at her side, being back to back with her yami then Sanura turned her head and looked at the guardian of the millennium items and the former pharaoh.  
  
"Sanura, thank the gods you're well rested." Yami paused as the shadows increased and a smirk appeared on the other yami's face. "... Oh no, not you too!"  
  
"Enough with the pleasantries, Pharaoh. It would be better if you watched your precious little light instead." Sanura warned, showing her fangs.  
  
"What are you talking about?! Don't you dare try to harm Yugi!" Yami snapped back.  
  
He didn't like the sinister glances that the yami and hikari exchanged as they both said. "You know what to do."  
  
Sanura crossed her arms and her feet rose about a foot from the floor. "You, dear Pharaoh, do not belong here anymore. You two have overstayed your welcome now leave."  
  
"What are you two planning?" Yami yelled at them again. "Who's in charge of your minds?! Whoever it is! Badru! Keket! Uadjit! You will pay for this! I know you can hear me!"  
  
"Save your breath." Chikara hissed, stabbing the pike into the shadows but not damaging the floor.  
  
"I told you that you were not welcome anymore." Sanura grinned, licking her cat fangs slowly with her tongue. "And now you get an all expenses paid trip to the shadow realm. Why not send you to the hell, you ask? Why do all that trouble while I can bring it here!"  
  
Shadi stepped back as the shadows seemed to take a form and slither across the floor; the empty spaces being replaced with more swirling black and purple foggy shadows. He narrowed his eyes and followed the path of shadows which seemed to coil around the room and end behind Sanura and Chikara. Both the Pharaoh and the guardian looked up when they heard a slow menacing hissing sound from the other side of the room. The shadows took a solid form and crashed on the floor. Black scales, reflecting gold and black patterns shifted slightly on the floorboards. The two followed the trail of dark scales until it came to an ending point, at the rearing head of an open-mouthed serpent which hissed again, bearing its poison covered fangs and flickering its pink tongue.  
  
Shadi narrowed his eyes. "The serpent that has one eye..."  
  
"Correct!" Sanura said as her attitude switched to one much more less serious but sadistic at the same time. "And you wonder why the lovely item is called the Serpent's eye? It is because Uadjit borrowed the eye from this poor, poor little one... Isn't that right?"  
  
The large snake hissed, rearing back more and focusing its one eye on Shadi and Yami.  
  
Yami cringed slightly. 'She's acting like those horrible toons that Pegasus used in the Duelists Tournament... and yet a rift to the Shadow Realm has been opened and focused on this house... soon it will expand past its boundaries and go into the city...'  
  
Sanura and Chikara flinched slightly when the snake shifted and accidentally making its scales touch their feet. Yami took careful note of that and took careful steps backwards, not making any fast movements from the odd Duel Monster.  
  
Sanura pointed at Shadi and Yami, smirking again. "Now my One-Eyed Serpent! Offer these two prying visitors a little taste of your Poisoned Fang!"  
  
The snake hissed more viciously and charged forward between Sanura and Chikara, heading straight towards Yami and the calm Shadi.  
  
"Kuri!" A squeak echoed from the hallway then followed by many more. "Kuri! Kuri!"  
  
Yami felt a rush of air behind them then dozens of brown furred Kuriboh zoomed from the hallway, providing a shield for the almost doomed pair. The snake ate about half of the army of Kuriboh and it pulled back, coughing up tuffs of fur. Yami exhaled slowly, glad that luck was on his side for that moment.  
  
"Get the boys for starters." Sanura said, flicking her gaze over to her hikari.  
  
Chikara stole one last silent glance at Shadi and Yami, and then the window of the room was surrounded by more fog of the shadow realm.  
  
"Chikara! Don't you dare go anywhere!" Yami said again.  
  
Chikara furrowed her eyebrows and ignored the yelling, jumping through the rift that had opened up in the window, causing another one to open within the Kaiba Mansion. She glanced around the hallway of the darkened foyer, seeing no one and hearing silence. She started walking up the stairs slowly, making next to no noise as she kept careful surveillance about the place around her.  
  
She knew that there were cameras around to catch the movements of intruders. She even managed to remember where most of them were placed, stopping under them, out of their reach, and slipping by, using the darkness of the hallway as cover. It was easier than she'd thought-nothing was set off, there was no barely audible click of machinery as a camera spotted her and followed her movements, and definitely no alarms.  
  
Her steps carried her down a particular hallway, less dim than the rest. A bit of light from the small gap under a door sliced through the darkness, making it harder to pass by. She took her time, knowing that her yami would need the extra moments to get Shadi and the Pharaoh out of her house. Soon she was a bit down the hall, the next door that she saw was letting no light through.  
  
Opening the door without a creak, Chikara slipped into the room. By the window was a small bed, and in it she could see a mess of tousled hair beneath thick blankets.  
  
She stepped closer, watching Mokuba carefully for any sign of movement. Once she got right next to the bed, she took the hand with the mark from the Swirls of Shadow and pressed it against the boy's cheek.  
  
He woke after a moment, blinking a few times to get the sleep out of his eyes, and looked up questioningly.  
  
"Huh..? Oh, Chikara... What are you doing here? Did something happen..?" He said, glancing at the hand that touched him.  
  
Chikara smirked for little or no reason as the symbol on the back of her hand began to glow, transferring itself to the boy's cheek. His eyes grew wide for a moment, and then began to close halfway, looking tired.  
  
"There we are..." she muttered, backing up as Mokuba got up, pulling himself from under the blankets and hopping off his bed. Slowly, quietly, she started leading him back to where she had come in, skirting the cameras again easily, and pushing Mokuba into the rift that remained open. She heard a small whirring sound and looked to a corner that wasn't too far away and saw that the camera was focusing right on her. She swore out loud and quickly slid into the rift, hearing an alarm go off.  
  
Once they were both in, the rift closed behind them, bringing them back to Chikara's house and the bedroom that was slowly being taken over by the shadow realm. Sanura was nowhere to be seen, yet neither were Yami or Shadi. She led the small, dazed Mokuba out of that room and into the one next to it, locking the door behind him.  
  
She could hear quite a bit of noise from downstairs, and assumed it was Sanura driving away the two annoyances. That didn't leave her with much time, if Yami were to retreat soon. Chikara sighed heavily, feeling the weariness starting to catch up with her already. The last supposal person she had to retrieve was Yugi, who's darker half was still preoccupied with Sanura.  
  
"Yugi..." She said quietly, looking at the floorboards.  
  
Chikara jumped when she heard the phone ring, and looked at it hesitantly. She stepped back in her room, where the shadow realm was still expanding and picked up the phone.  
  
"Where's Mokuba?!" She heard Seto Kaiba's voice. "He's not in his room and the home security alarm went off! Did you take him?!"  
  
Chikara stayed silent, her eyes drifting over to the fogginess of the shadow realm, which swirled around the room. Kaiba heard the hiss and crashing from the oversized serpent from the first floor though the other line.  
  
"Chikara, what's going on?!" He asked again, then the line was cut short.  
  
Chikara dropped the phone and walked through the same rift that she recently just exited, but this time advancing towards Yugi's house.  
  
Sanura had successfully driven Yami and Shadi out of the house and was standing on the edge of the roof of the house, smirking down at them.  
  
"Your little fur balls couldn't stand a chance against a serpent, now could it?" She almost cackled, but still sounded less serious than any threatening person would. "Don't you want to play a bit longer before the world ends, Pharaoh?"  
  
"Never!" Yelled back Yami as he looked at the One-Eyed Serpent that had coiled itself around part of the house, hissing down at him. "If it's a battle with duel monsters then you're going to get it!"  
  
Yami had taken note that the shadows expanded into the front yard and he took a chance of trying to use a duel monster. He pulled out his Dark Magician card and summoned it onto the front yard as protection. He looked back along the street as one of Kaiba's non-limousine cars screeched to a halt and Seto stepped out from the driver's side.  
  
"Where's Mokuba?!" He questioned immediately, looking around. "And what the hell is going on!?"  
  
"Mokuba?" Yami raised an eyebrow, then looked back at Sanura. "That's what she could have meant! Oh no! YUGI!"  
  
At that same moment, Chikara had left Yugi's house but not through the shadow realm rift. It had closed so she was forced to run back to her home to take the dazed Yugi, using the same spell she had used on Mokuba, to the little 'prison'. She carried Yugi on her back and started to sprint through the streets, flicking her gaze around at the empty sidewalks. She skid to a jolting stop when she saw Marik walking about with Malik and Isis. They were out on watch and a search for Badru while the darkness cloaked them, and it seemed even stranger that Isis was along with them. Chikara backed up a few careful steps, keeping her eyes glued on the three Ishtars.  
  
Her tail twitched nervously as Marik stopped suddenly, not moving.  
  
"Yami?" Malik asked. "What's wrong?"  
  
"The Shadow Realm, I can feel it somewhere near.... it's been bothering me for quite a while now and I think we've found half of what we've been looking for..." Marik looked over his shoulder directly at Chikara.  
  
Chikara hunched down slightly and bolted onto another street, trying to get back to her house as soon as possible. She winced as it felt like the chain that held the Swirls of Shadow was tightening around her neck and making it harder for her to breathe. She swore in Ancient Egyptian, not knowing what words she was saying because the words were stolen from her yami's mind and vocabulary.  
  
Sanura could feel her hikari suffering and soon felt as if her own neck was being constricted with the chain. She winced, her eye twitching as she tried not to put her hands to her throat to the invisible restraint. She saw Chikara running towards the house with Marik and Malik chasing after her, but the chain of the Swirls of Shadow were glowing black.  
  
"Yugi!" Yami yelled, seeing his hikari being carried by Chikara. "Malik, one of you try to get Yugi before she drops him!"  
  
Marik smirked when the Pharaoh asked for help and snagged the collar of Yugi's pajamas, pulling him back just before Chikara fell on the front lawn, grasping at the chain that was choking her.  
  
"Yugi!" Yami ran over to his hikari and took him from Marik. "Yugi, what's wrong? Snap out of it!"  
  
The symbol that was on Yugi's cheek disappeared and the boy blinked a few times, looking at his yami. "Yami? What happened... The Dark Magician? What's going on?"  
  
"Seto! Anyone! Where is everyone!" Mokuba's voice came from one of the other second floor rooms.  
  
"Mokuba!" Seto yelled up. "Stay where you are, wait for me to come get you!"  
  
"I'm scared, Seto!"  
  
"I'll be up there in a minute, Mokuba! Don't worry!" Seto yelled back, then turned his attention back to Yugi and Yami. "Explain what's going on!"  
  
"I'll be happy to answer all your nosy little questions, you clueless mortals..." Said a female voice.  
  
Yami snapped his gaze over to Chikara and Sanura, finding them both unconscious with the hikari lying on the grass and the yami slumped over the edge of the roof.  
  
"Show yourself!" Yami said, looking around quickly.  
  
There was a tall torrent of shadows that gathered beside Chikara and a separate one that gathered on the roof by Sanura. All the present and conscious people watched as the shadows, lowered to the ground and two women were standing there.  
  
Yami narrowed his eyes. "Keket...Uadjit..."  
  
Keket smiled coolly, looking at the angry Pharaoh with her burning stare. "Pharaoh..."  
  
Keket looked at the unconscious form of Chikara and the shadows crept across her body, covering her completely and she disappeared. The exact same thing happened to Sanura then:  
  
"Seto! Chikara's in here and I think she's hurt! You've got to come here quickly and help her, big brother! And someone else is here too! Hurry!" Mokuba yelled from the room.  
  
Seto shook his head, starting for the door of the house. The woman who had been on the roof jumped down in front of him, her fully dark eyes narrowing. Uadjit hadn't spoken yet at all, her voice remaining a mystery.  
  
She was also in his way, and Mokuba was sitting in the window watching, teary-eyed.  
  
"Alright, either get out of my way or explain just what is going on here..." he growled, meeting the almost soulless snakelike gaze before turning around and running into Keket's glare.  
  
"Of course," She said, smirking still, "I could explain this easily... The Pharaoh knows why this is all happening." She turned toward Yami again, her head tilted slightly.  
  
"... Of course... It's your own foolish anger," Yami said plainly. Keket snarled, pulling a weapon out of the shadows suddenly as Chikara had earlier.  
  
"This isn't just some foolish grudge!" She said, practically yelling in her anger, "We lived our lives subordinate to you because of only who our parents were, never able to have a life as good as yours because of something we had no control over! Not only that, but you grew angry when people -tried- to rise, punishments, terrorizing the peasants into fearing you and your foolish court, into believing that you were thinking of their better interest... Your reign was long due to end, and your ignorance of the fact only made it important that it be crushed all the more quickly!"  
  
Yami crossed his arms. "Changing the system that's been around for centuries was something that would have taken a long time to do, no matter what you would have liked."  
  
"That doesn't matter now!" Uadjit yelled from the front of the house, her hands clenching into fists as if she wanted a weapon to cling to, as well. "We almost succeeded and you put a stop to it... Sealed in the gods- forsaken shadow realm! Do you know what it's like in there for so long!?"  
  
"It's supposed to be a punishment... You knew what the dangers were when you set out to kill me."  
  
"I would have preferred you take my life to being stuck in... That place!" Uadjit said, literally hissing the words. "Five thousand years, Pharaoh... With no sunlight... No warmth... We lived, but little more than you have lived." She lowered her face, looking at the ground as she spoke. After a moment of silence, she looked up at Yami through the veil of hair that had fallen over her eyes, a dimming streetlamp glinting off them.  
  
"What you see here, we are no more than our desire for revenge," she said, a malicious smile spreading over her face.  
  
"And the other? What is Badru's part in all this..?"  
  
"Badru is an idiot," Keket said out of nowhere, causing everyone to look at her once again. She was twirling the weapon she had created from the shadows before between her fingers, looking a bit bored. "He is, unlike Sanura and her light, working on his own accord. But he's doing exactly what we planned, in exactly the way we planned."  
  
She paused, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "And us telling you this can't stop us. You can't defeat us, Pharaoh, and even if you were to get rid of us, our little toys are perfectly ready to take on the mission, now..." 


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8  
  
[Disclaimer: We do not own Yu-Gi-Oh. Us being Bakura13 and Tora-kun, the  
authoresses of this fan fiction]  
  
Mokuba looked back at the locked door and turned his gaze back to the front of the house. His panic rose as more of the dangerous-looking fog started slowly crawling and expanding into the room and outside of the house.  
  
"Seto, the shadows are getting bigger!" He cried out, gripping the window tightly. "The door's locked and I can't get out! Please help me! Don't leave me here!"  
  
Seto clenched his fists, not letting himself face the fact that it was next to impossible for him to save his brother if he couldn't have access to the house. Marik had his arms crossed, looking at Keket and Uadjit with his half-lidded gaze while grinding his teeth in a twitchy habit. He, of course, had some, if not most, of the memories of the High Priest back from Ancient Egypt. Seto was the true owner of the millennium rod but Malik had refused to give it to the CEO; thus allowing Marik to acquire the remnants of the priest's experiences. He grimaced, searching through more of the muddled thoughts that lay dormant in his brain.  
  
"Let my little brother go, you old hags." Seto growled.  
  
"Hah, You're also not one to be making demands, boy!" Keket said, snapping the direction of the shadow pike at Seto. "We'll do whatever we please to make the Pharaoh suffer... and if I recall, you were his High Priest, were you not? You both don't look so mighty without your precious valuables and garments, now do you?"  
  
Yami lowered his head slightly, his gaze now burning towards Keket. "Don't go taking your revenge out on my friends, Keket. You as well, Uadjit. If you want to settle your grudge, then settle it with me alone..."  
  
Yugi looked up at his darker off. "But Yami-"  
  
"Stay out of this, Yugi... this isn't your battle." Yami warned, not looking at his aibou. "Settle it with me alone and keep everyone else out of it... do you both understand?"  
  
Keket smiled coolly, gracefully looking back at Uadjit. "How about it..."  
  
Uadjit looked up from gently stroking the head of the One-Eyed Serpent, looking quite pleased with the idea. "Of course, this will be fun... Ever heard of Shadow Games, Pharaoh?"  
  
Yami narrowed his eyes. "What are you two planning... remember what I said- "  
  
"Oh for Orisis' sake, who cares what you said." Keket said smoothly, dropping the pike to the shadowed ground and it disappeared in wisps of darkness. "I'm sure you enjoyed playing Shadow Games back in Egypt... a long time ago... five-thousand years, wasn't it?"  
  
Uadjit nodded. "If my memory serves me correct..."  
  
Keket closed her eyes, bowing her head. "Quite accurate... this Shadow Game will be different... I suppose you could call it a Dark Game... something that suits you perfectly... You may be the King of Games but are you the King of Darkness..."  
  
Yami racked his brain to find out what the 'Goddess of Darkness' was thinking.  
  
"Puzzled?" Keket opened her eyes only halfway, the smirk looking more dangerous as her gaze met with Yami's. "You should be fearing for your life and the lives of the ones who are going to be subjected to this lovely little game...."  
  
Meanwhile, Mokuba was still standing in the window, watching what was going on outside. He turned back towards the door after a moment, keeping close track of the disturbing, almost lethal looking shadows that had been oozing out from under the door slowly.  
  
He still wasn't completely sure what was going on outside, but it terrified him that his brother couldn't come up and get him. The two scary women had stopped him. Both of them made him nervous, yelling and screaming, one with her angular, malevolent features, the other round-faced and dark, petting the snake as if it were her friend. For that much, it probably was.  
  
The two were still sleeping on the floor. Mokuba recognized Chikara, but the other girl was completely unknown to him. They looked a lot alike, enough to be sisters or even twins, but he knew that Chikara didn't have a sister.  
  
The shadows were slithering ever closer, and seemed as if, from lack of mass, they were flattening themselves down onto the ground, reaching towards the girls, and him, with shadowy fingers. He thought about trying to move them, but it wouldn't help, and he knew it. Even if he had tried, by the time he came up with the answer to his own question, the darkness was upon the two.  
  
They stirred as it touched them. Mokuba wondered if it was hurting them, or if they were waking on their own. He didn't think of the actual chances of them waking together naturally, and he definitely didn't know what was actually going on.  
  
Sanura stood up first, brushing locks of purple hair out of her face and offering her hand to her hikari. The dark fog behind them suddenly began to bulge, as if it were still rushing from outside but at a hundred-fold the speed, gushing around them like a flood in slow motion.  
  
Sanura smiled, looking back a bit at the darkness about to fill the room and destroy them all. Chikara took a fleeting look at both the shadow and her yami and then starting towards Mokuba.  
  
He backed up apprehensively, almost tripping himself out the window when he ran into it.  
  
"Seto!" He whimpered, looking over his shoulder and wishing very much that his brother would come and help him. As he did, he could feel the slight rush of air as the darkness surged out of the window from behind him, engulfing him in darkness.  
  
Outside, Kaiba heard his brother again, his eyes darting back up to the window in time to see the flood of shadow literally exploding out of it, not only the window but every other window, breaking glass somehow, pushing the door open. The street was quickly covered in it, all of them standing in the pure lightlessness of it all.  
  
Mokuba was nowhere to be seen, or the two he'd been with. They stood just within sight of one another, the two goddesses, Kaiba, Yami and Yugi, Malik, Marik, and Isis, in a rough circle of dim, ambient light.  
  
Keket smirked, seeming to disappear as it looked like she was fading into the shadows. "Welcome to the beginning of the Dark Game, Pharaoh... quite different from the Shadow Games that you are accustomed with your monsters... Duel Monsters as you call them now..."  
  
"Where are you going?!" Yelled Yami, trying to take a step forward but black shadow tendrils held his ankles back from the 'ground'. "What's going on here?!"  
  
Marik snapped back from searching through the memories to find the shadows crawling up his sides, latching onto his hands and feet. "I don't know what type of a stupid game this is but I tire of it!" He pulled his hands up, trying to get freed but the tendrils wouldn't release their grip.  
  
Uadjit smirked, disappearing into the wisps of shadows as well. "Have fun..."  
  
"Wait!" Yami snarled, but the two were gone.  
  
"Malik-" Isis' cry was cut short from a wave of shadows engulfing her completely, taking her away into the darkness behind her.  
  
Malik's eyes widened and he looked around frantically. "Isis? Where are you, answer me!"  
  
"You stupid idiot, look out behind you-ACK!" Marik grabbed for the black tendril that was wrapped tightly around his neck, trying to pry it off.  
  
"Yami!" Malik stepped forward and fell into an invisible hole, the shadows claiming another victim.  
  
Marik was roughly pulled back into the slow swirling darkness, and then there were three.  
  
"Kaiba, don't move!" Yami warned, looking around at the remaining people. "We don't know what happens here!"  
  
"Big brother! Someone help me, I can't see!" Mokuba's voice cried out, seeming to echo everywhere.  
  
Seto glanced around, trying to pinpoint the location of his younger brother. "Mokuba, hang on! I'll be right there!"  
  
"Kaiba, no!" Yugi said as he helplessly watched the CEO disappear into the shadows.  
  
"Yugi, say there!" Yami said, looking at his hikari. He and Yugi were the only ones remaining.  
  
"Yami!" Yugi cried out, being ensnared by the darkness from above and being pulled away from his yami. "Don't leave me, Yami! Help me!"  
  
"Yugi, NO!" Yami yelled, reaching up for his aibou's hand but finding his aibou getting further away.  
  
"You're sinking into the ground! Don't leave me here, Yami!" Yugi reached down for his yami's hand.  
  
Yami struggled to grasp his aibou's hand but he watched helplessly as his light was being pulled up into the darkness that surrounded everything. "Yugi..." He was powerless to do anything as he slowly sunk into the shadows of the floor, watching the last of his aibou's hand being pulled into the darkness. "Yugi... no..." Yami was up to his neck into the sinking shadows, feeling nothing but cold as he looked up at where his aibou once was. "No... YUGI!"  
  
The Pharaoh sat up in a fairly fashioned bed with dark silk sheets, drenched with a cold sweat down his bare tanned chest as his breathing sounded harsh. "It was a dream... and who was that boy... why was I reaching for him..."  
  
He slid off of the bed, walking over to one of the windows of his room and looked out. He let his crimson eyes adjust to the rising Egyptian sun and there he saw an entire town, as well as the other walls of the palace. The Pharaoh was in Egypt, where he belonged.  
  
His eyes lit over the land spread out before him, all of it his. The day was just getting started for the nearby town, the people in their homes waking slowly to tend to their children and animals and get their first meal of the day, and the shopkeepers beginning to set up for the busy day ahead.  
  
After watching the busyness of it all for a moment, he turned back to his room to get dressed in his more proper clothing, and then walked out, about to go to his throne room and start his own daily routine.  
  
Seth and his attendant, Sanura, were walking down the hallway in the opposite direction. Seth stopped for a moment, bowing reverently, and Yami nodded at him as he passed. Sanura inclined her head, looking at the floor and following her master at a slight distance before they both disappeared around a corner, likely leaving the palace to pick up supplies and otherwise do business in the town.  
  
Yami entered his throne room and sat down, sighing and wondering about his strange dream as he readied himself for the day.  
  
Somewhere else, Yugi snapped back into consciousness, his head throbbing slightly as he stood up, but the pain dispersing quickly. The room he was in was small and sparsely furnished, with what looked like a dirt floor in the dim light. He found an opening in the wall, covered by a kind of cloth covering, and pushed it aside.  
  
He was greeted with the view of a bustling street, people rushing about in all sorts of strange outfits, camels and horses leading carts through the dusty street, and the palace standing high against everything.  
  
There was some sort of half a tent latched onto the front of the small building, and within it there were all kinds of shelves and boxes, a mini store that no one seemed to be attending. From nowhere, it rushed into his head that his grandpa was out, and he should stay and watch the place for him.  
  
'But that's not right,' he thought, sitting down. 'We've lived upstairs... not behind the shop... or was that the strange dream I had...'  
  
Yugi put on less ragged clothes at he felt was familiar for when he worked in his grandpa's shop, running over to the front. He glanced around from behind the wooden table and watched as some townspeople took glances at various booths. Yugi sat a bit impatiently, just letting his mind wander.  
  
'It all feels so weird...' He thought, glancing around from table to table. 'But it somehow feels normal...'  
  
He sat a while longer until a brown-haired girl walked into the store, looking around at the items with her blue eyes. He looked up, thinking that she was very familiar. The teenaged girl looked up at Yugi, flashing him a small smile and went back to browsing.  
  
'... She looks familiar...' Yugi thought as the girl left.  
  
He got up and busied himself with randomly shifting items to be more into view when he heard some more people enter the small bazaar. He saw two more people; looking a tad confused, glance around. One was a tall teenaged boy with brunette air and dark cerulean eyes and the other was a teenaged girl who was almost the other's height; having long dark purple hair, the same-color feline tail and nervous-looking violet eyes. Yugi watched them carefully, finding them leave and sat behind the wooden table again, sighing helplessly. A few moments later, Yugi thought the two had reentered the shop but found them... different.  
  
The tall brunette, dressed in more formal clothing of the Egyptian High Priest, looked down upon the purple-haired girl; who in turn had Egyptian hieroglyphs on her neck, a familiar dark purple feline tail and her eyes shone a tense crimson lavender tint. "Don't touch anything. Wait here."  
  
The girl nodded, shifting uncomfortably in her robes that were less decorative than the High Priest's.  
  
'... Is she a slave...?' Yugi wondered, slightly tilting his head as he watched the two with violet innocent eyes. 'Weren't they just in here?'  
  
"You." Seth's voice barked as he crossed his arms, glowering as Yugi looked vaguely similar to the Pharaoh. "If you value your life, you will strip your gaze from my slave and do what I bid."  
  
Yugi jumped slightly, looking up at the taller boy and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He felt quite small and bowed his head immediately, feeling like death was staring him in the eye when he met the other's gaze. "I'm sorry..."  
  
"Where is the old man that owns this shop?" Seth asked, narrowing his eyes slightly at the younger boy. "Are you his apprentice?"  
  
Yugi nodded, though not quite knowing what the man was talking about. "My grandfather is out for the moment..."  
  
Seth gave an irritated hiss from his throat, obviously not liking the wait. "Then I shall remain until he returns..."  
  
Both of them heard a few things fall from a table as their gazes turned towards the front of the shop. Seth's eyes shot wide as he saw a tall boy resembling him almost completely, with exception of the lower class clothes.  
  
"What is this? Who dares to mock me?" Seth barked, walking forward.  
  
"What? I'm not mocking you!" The other boy shot back in an analogous voice. "I've always looked like this!"  
  
"As have I!" Growled Seth, clenching a fist. "I am the Pharaoh's most trusted High Priest and I demand to know what's going on right now!"  
  
"I am Seto Kaiba." Seto shot back, pointing at Seth in defiance.  
  
Both of them glared at each other, speaking simultaneously. "You are a fake!"  
  
A crowd had stopped outside of the shop, most of them emitting a horrified gasp and others murmuring to each other. Sanura, the High Priest's newly taken in slave, emitted a beast-like snarl as she narrowed her eyes at what seemed to be a gentler copy of her. Chikara was slightly taken aback at her 'reflection's' behavior but didn't back off, keeping her eyes on the other. Seth flickered his gaze to the first girl he knew then the second, getting more frustrated.  
  
"Guards!" Seth's voice boomed out. "Take these... peasants straight to the Pharaoh at once! The shop keeper's grandson, and the..." He paused, not knowing what to call them. "... The frauds."  
  
"What?!" Seto pulled forward as his arms were twisted behind him. "How dare you!"  
  
"And how dare -you- speak so heatedly towards your superiors! To the palace at once!" Seth snapped.  
  
Yugi was lifted from his seat and dragged over to the gigantic palace that he had been gazing at a little earlier. He looked around in awe as the other two prisoners were in a rage from being forced into capture. Seth pushed open a pair of giant doors that led to a throne room, where the Pharaoh himself was seated.  
  
"Pharaoh, I advise you to see this." Seth said, watching with a burning glare as the prisoners were dragged in and thrown forward, forced to kneel at spear-point.  
  
The Pharaoh, known as Yami, opened his eyes halfway slowly, as if awakening from a small morning doze, and he looked down at the people before him. He swept his gaze gradually across the forms of the prisoners and a small boy that resembled him greatly held his stare. Yugi looked back at the Pharaoh, ignoring the rough nudges from the guards as they told him to keep his eyes down like the ungrateful peasant he was.  
  
"...Y-Yami?" He uttered in a whisper, his eyes captivated by the Pharaoh.  
  
Yami's features turned into a frown as he heard the odd boy say his first name, and he spoke in a smooth low-toned voice. "I am the Pharaoh of Egypt and you do not have permission to refer to me by my first name."  
  
Yugi's eyes lit up in relief as he started to remember something. Before they were all sucked into the shadow realm, it was Yami; from the Millennium Puzzle. Yugi lowered his gaze to the golden puzzle that hung from the Pharaoh's neck. "It's you! It's really you, Yami! I can't believe it!"  
  
Yami started to stand up but was pushed back by the smaller weight of the boy as he was hugged tightly. "... What is the meaning of this?"  
  
"Yami! It's you! We have to get out of here!" Yugi said, looking up at the confused reaction of Yami.  
  
He found himself being pulled away, Yami backing away a bit dazedly. Yugi was held by two of the guards who gripped his arms tightly.  
  
Seth fairly hissed in anger. "This is foolishness... Pharaoh, what should we do with these imposters?"  
  
Yami shook his head slowly, as if to clear it. "Put them in the dungeons for now. There's plenty of room and I need some time to think about this." Seth nodded dutifully and motioned the guards to lead the prisoners out.  
  
"Yami! No, you can't do this!" Yugi whimpered, being dragged out of the throne room as Yami sat down, watching them leave, thinking.  
  
It was a particularly long walk down to the dungeons, and by the time they got there the three prisoners were more sedate than before, Yugi mostly having resigned himself sadly to his fate, although still thinking of what he could do, while Chikara and Seto seethed quietly.  
  
They were thrown into the cells despite the fact that they would have likely walked into them angry but willingly with no other alternatives open. Each sat in his own cell, separated only by waist-high walls that were connected to the ceilings by thick metal bars.  
  
Yugi stood slowly, sore, and looked around. There was nothing in the area, but there were shackles on the wall that he was glad were not being utilized. The cells stretched on seemingly infinitely towards the west wall; there was only one separating him from the east wall, though. To his left, he could see Seto standing and assessing the situation from his point, as well, and although the dim torchlight didn't let him see far, he thought he could see the dim glint of Chikara's violet hair.  
  
He was remembering more each passing moment. He knew who Yami had been before; his darker side. He also remembered Kaiba and Chikara, and mostly understood why they had a double in this place. He remembered bits and pieces about Domino City and his life.  
  
What he couldn't place was why they were here; it looked and felt like ancient Egypt, where Yami was from; everything behaved correctly, everyone acted like this were the true world. Had they somehow reversed time? Or, were they still within the shadow realm?  
  
He looked to the cell on the right. It was about as dark as Chikara's had been to him, because the torch seemed to be somewhere right outside his own. He could barely make out a human form slouched in the corner, head down and looking at something on the wall. His hand chased it, slowly, then closed around it in a careful, gentle fist.  
  
Yugi thought to turn away from the other prisoner, putting his hand on one of the metal bars, and it creaked slightly. Suddenly, a round face snapped up to meet his eyes, the bare light glinting off his eyes startlingly.  
  
Badru crushed the small black beetle he'd caught as he noticed the boy watching him, and discreetly shoved it into the pocket of his faded yellow robes, feeling its last feeble twitches of life against his palm.  
  
"What." He said, not a question, but an accusation.  
  
"Um... Nothing," Yugi said quietly, backing up from the bars. "Do I know you?"  
  
Badru shrugged. "Name's Badru. I don't think I know you, you look like the damned Pharaoh who threw me down here."  
  
Yugi bit his lip a bit, nervously. He couldn't place it. He knew who the guy was.  
  
"Why'd you get thrown down here..? Is it because you have a double in the palace, too?"  
  
"...No," Badru said, then smiled brightly. "It was because I stole some stuff really close to the palace and they thought I was going to try to break in." He dug in his pocket, and tossed something through the bars with a smooth underhand curve. Yugi caught it, amazed that it went between the close-set bars. It was a long, small loaf of bread, and it still felt fresh.  
  
"There you go, they probably won't feed you for a day or two anyway. My pockets are half-full of it, it's delicious. They know me here, they didn't even bother going through my stuff to see if I had more." He pulled something else out of his pocket and crunched it.  
  
"Will you quiet your obnoxious mouth so some of us can think?" Seto said. Yugi flushed a bit, sitting down to ignore them both, and hesitantly tasting the bread he'd been thrown. It did taste pretty good, though it had a flavor that he didn't recognize.  
  
"Will you shut your obnoxious mouth so some of us can think?" Badru repeated, putting on a squeaky tone, aping Kaiba before stuffing something else from his pocket into his mouth.  
  
"...Don't mock me over there! I can hear that!"  
  
Badru was standing by now, leaning against the bars of his cell, as was Kaiba. "That was the -point-!"  
  
"Idiot! Don't make me come over there!"  
  
Yugi closed his eyes somewhat to the two as they bickered, trying to remember as much as he could. Kaiba had been his friend--kind of--and so had Chikara. He knew that this wasn't the 'real' world as he knew it; somehow he knew it was part of the shadow realm. But why were they there?  
  
"You're going to come over here? I'd like to see you try, smart guy."  
  
He tried to remember the last thing he could, before he had woken up, but it was like a black cloak was thrown over it all. He drove his memory backwards, over a jumble of meaningless bits and pieces, and to a few days back.  
  
Very, very slowly, Yugi tuned out the two who continued to argue and worked through each moment. Once he figured out what he'd forgotten, he had a feeling he could solve the strange problems that seemed to be piling up.  
  
[We've had another inspirational idea for this fan fiction, since we spoke about it, and it should prove more interesting. If only we could get more people to read this...] 


End file.
